>I have three pc's connected through Windows 98, sharing one of the drives. I use an SQL SELECT
>to build a temporary file of a customers bills. Then the operator selects one to review. The Master File has
>50,000 records in it. This process is very fast if the operator is working on the server (about a second).
>
>If the operator is on one of the other pc's the same process takes about 10 seconds. What can I do to
>speed this up?
>

(1) Put in a faster network. The data rate of the typical local hard drive is a few MB/sec; the data rate of 10Mbps EtherNet, which is shared comunications media, is likely to be more on the order of 200-300KB/sec. 100Mbps Ethernet would obviously be much faster.

(2) Don't use peer-to-peer networking. Any work being done on the machine 'sharing' its disk will slow down the machine's ability to respond to network service requests. Any memory in use by local applications will not be available to help keep network-service-related thigns in memory. Given the low cost of hardware, having a machine, even if it's just another another peer on the network, that is not responsible for anything but network service tasks is going to improve network performance. In addition, the less stuff running on the server box, the lower the chance of something 'locking up' and crashing out the whole netgwork, or of having the operator just switch off the power because 'well, I'm done, so power down and go to lunch!"

Putting in an inadequate network solution because it loks less expensive on the surface usually ends up costing a wholer lot more in the end when the problems of doing things wronmg surface.