>Here's my question: Would it be better to have one "customer" table and one "orders" table... OR... should I consider a separate set of tables for each and every subscriber?

There would be advantages and disadvantages either way. With one set of tables your application design is simpler but, for one thing, the 2GB size restriction would then apply to the aggregate size of all your clients' records taken together instead of to each one individually. A design to use a separate set of tables for each client would be slightly more complicated but several smaller sets of files might be easier to work with from a housekeeping point of view (backups, etc.) plus problems in one would not affect the others.

Like a lot of things, IMO it's a tradeoff and you could reasonably go either way and be OK. FWIW I have an app that keeps separate copies of the DBC and all tables in separate directories for each client, and that approach has worked well. YMMV.