imcffp,

So at any given time, you will have at most two + one + four + one = EIGHT users hammering your AC database at one time (I assume no one uses the server as a workstation).

Guess what. Even with all eight users entering stuff as hard as they can, SQL Server will still be spending most of its time sitting on its butt bored to death. Consider the following SQL Update statement:

SQL Query
UPDATE Demographics SET
[Last] = ?,
[First] = ?,
Middle = ?,
Gender = ?,
Birthdate = ?,
SS = ?,
City = ?,
State = ?,
Zip = ?,
Phone = ?,
PatientAddress = ?,
WorkPhone = ? 
WHERE patient = ?

This statement is very similar to what AC would run to update a patient demographic. It takes less than a second to run that statement. In fact, if you have someone change a demographic in AC and hit the save button while you are staring at the blinking hard drive light on your server, you will barely notice the blink.

Upgrading to SQL Server Standard will do nothing for performance for you. The only thing SQL Server Standard will get you is all the Business Intelligence tools (Integration Services, Analysis Services, Reporting Services). But those tools are useless without the SA password to the Amazing Charts database - which I doubt techsupport will let you have.

Please, don't waste your money. And always be certain to question every expense your IT guy wants you to make. Take it from me - an IT guy.

I don't mean to sound harsh with all this - but I utterly despise seeing people waste money on IT and I hate seeing IT guys take advantage of their clients - whether intentionally or not - as it makes all us other IT guys look very bad.
JamesNT

James Summerlin
My personal site: http://www.dataintegrationsolutions.net
james@dataintegrationsolutions.net