I agree, the Access Projects are the way to go.  

Back when I was doing developement in Access 2000, if I recall correctly, there was no way to import other types of data, like text files, using Projects.  That functionality was important for several projects I was working on, so I stayed with the traditional approach.  But, the functionality is there in Access 2003.  So, if I had a new application to write, I would consider using Access Projects.

As far as traditional linking to SQL, I suggest that you keep the user from ever seeing the linked tables.  I also always designed the app so that the user would only have one record attached to a form at a time. That worked very well.