I just came across this very useful article on Mircosoft's Office On-line portal:
Improve Performance of an Access Database.
Significant performance issues for Access developers are deploying Access databases over a network and in multi-user environments. This article has some really well-presented advice and tips. A tip on improving the performance of linked tables is particularly helpful:
You can greatly enhance performance, when opening the main database and opening tables and forms, by forcing the linked database to remain open. To do this, create an empty table in the linked database, and link the table in the main database. Then, use the OpenRecordset method to open the linked table. This prevents the Microsoft Jet database engine from repeatedly opening and closing the linked database and from creating and deleting the associated .ldb file.
