Controlling the number of connections that Access uses

[roypython]

Hi.
Your help is very appreciated.
I'm using ACCESS 2002(XP).
I upsized my Access app(s) (.mdb) to use SQL SERVER 7.0 as backend (through linked tables).
There are about 40 users, each running his own instance of the front end (Access app ), all connecting to the same sql server 7.0 db.

As a result, the number of connections is about 40 +.

The problem: My SQL SERVER license is for 8 connections and the apps (front-end) are using more than 40 connections.

* What solutions do you see?

I thought of the following solutions, but none is very good:
1. Buying license for more connections (every additional connection costs about $350 - way too much for my
budget)
2. Using MSDE 2000 (I doubt that the DB performance will be satisfactory, since the workload governor will most
probably slow it down big time, but I can test it and see).
2. Use connection pooling to share connections to the databas, so that 40 concurrent can be serviced from one
connection.
This sounds like the perfect solution, but implementation can be complicated.

** Any ideas regarding simple implementation of connection pooling to be used by 40 instances of access front-
end apps?

Thanks a lot
Roy