It all depends on what you are trying to do, how you intend to use it,
and choosing the right tool for the job. Thanks for sharing your
experience on the comparison. I have more comments inline:

Mycelium wrote:
I have a DVD database spreadsheet that has 167k entries and about 12
columns of never changing data.

In Excel, it is a 14MB file that can be searched within milliseconds.

In Access, it is a 169MB file, and searches take several seconds.

While not a trivial difference in file size, 169MB is not overwhelmingly
large by any stretch in terms of today's storage capacities. Also,
Access can suffer bloating as things are manipulated. Frequent use of
Compact & Repair will keep this in check. This is something new Access
users need to learn.

It would appear that Access, the database, has a MAJOR flaw in the way
it stores data.

It also apparently performs un-needed steps when performing a simple
search function as well.

Access searches will probably be much quicker if appropriate indexing is
applied to the table(s). Not sure what you mean by a major flaw. Data
storage is much easier to manage in Access compared to Excel.

That is truly sad, since all the dopes here have been telling me that
my spreadsheet is better of as a database.

It would appear that Excel is better at doing database type things than
the database does.

That is an oversimplification. Access is much more capable than Excel
when it comes to core database competencies, such as managing relational
data, enforcing business rules/data integrity, returning multiple
results from a conditional lookup, filtering or aggregating data on
multiple criteria, etc. You may not have hit upon any of those issues in
your spreadsheet solution.

This problem rears its ugly head elsewhere is your processing paradigms
as well.

If I create a spread sheet that has one sheet that performs lookups to
the 14 MB workbook, the spreadsheet that is a single row lookup of the
bigger workbook suddenly climbs to the exact same size as the workbook it
references. That is absolutely wrong!

Are you saying Excel failed your expectations here? Seems counter to
your argument. Maybe I misunderstood.