These databases are impressive but, can access handle VERY LARGE AMOUNTS OF DATA.  A small personal business can benefit, but what about corporations, banks etc.  Can a database where a large amounts of data used to track the performance of it sales reps (nothing like Social Security numbers and specific account information)but large amounts of data.  If access was on a server connecting to regional branches, WOULD IT BE ABLE TO HANDLE IT?

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Reply from Richard Rost:

Access tables do have their limits. 2 GB is the max size of any one database, so that's the max size of any one table (and yes, I have reached that before). You can link multiple databases together to get around that somewhat (a 2 GB customer table and a 2 GB order table can be in different databases).

However, one of Access' strengths is that it can be used as a front-end for a more powerful BACK-END database, like SQL Server. So you can start your development in Access while your database is small, use it for a while to make sure everything works, then when the time comes to scale up, it's VERY easy to move your data up to SQL Server which IS able to handle just about any amount of data.