1. In the ASP days, I liked Access because I could teach a client (with a workstation Access installation) to open the web site using FrontPage, double click the Access mdb to open it, and copy and paste the new records into a local mdb. No need for a complicated procedure to get the data to and from. An alternative is to FTP the mdbs back and forth. Can't do that with SQL server because of the security. You have to get involved with logic on the server.
2. You can get all the SQL Server 2000 UI machinery for MSDE 2 by installing an evaluation copy without the database engine. Choose SQLServer, then "SQL server and Client Tools. Then after the license agreement, select Client Tools Only. You can also do Analysis Services and the SP2 will install (won't install on full evaluation copy). This was in the readme bumf that came with .NET, but one of our local gurus, Steve Forte told me about it.