Since the price of 16 MB RAM has fallen below the price of a single scientific book, I do not consider it worth the effort and problems of parallel development. Anyone volunteering to do so is welcome. This will be the compressed size, Microsoft Access uses more space during operation. For example with an 800 kB import file, you should have 15-30 MB available on your hard disk. This should not be a problem with today's large hard disks.
Faster processors are nicer, of course, especially as the import process is relatively slow.
Microsoft Access is a database that performs many operations on the hard disk, whereas other specialized programs perform such operations in the much faster RAM memory. The advantage is that your data sets can become much larger when using a database. See the chapter Software architecture of DeltaAccess for a discussion of the advantages of using a relational database and the advantages and disadvantages of using Microsoft Access. Installation DeltaAccess is distributed as a self-expanding compressed file. All files should be kept in the same directory.