I was told "Fields are expensive, records are cheap"

Hi,

I just have a self education question.

In response to one of my questions I stated that I added a lot of fields (a
lot was 30 fields) to my table. The initial implementation was so
successful, the user requested quite a few more enhancements resulting in the
addition of 30 additional fields.

One MVP who responded stated "Fields are expensive, records are cheap". I'm
currious about his statement. I'm new to Access (less than a year) but I
have over 30 years experience with relational databased on multiple
platforms. I've always been taught the exact opposite - that "Fields are
cheap, records are expensive" since going to disk is so slow versus accessing
data in memory.

Is there something different about Access where the statement "Fields are
expense, records are cheap" is true. I'm using Access on local machine where
the front and backs end reside on the same machine as well as having multiple
front ends on each client's machine tied into the back end which resides on
a file server. We have a hardwired ethernet cat5 cable network.

Dennis