Page Fragmentation

I can't figure out why I'm not getting more rows on a page.

I am using SQL Server 2000. I have a table with a large row size, approx 3500 bytes. However, there are several varchar columns that frequently have small amounts of data in them. There is no clustering index on this table. Based on the amount of data in the row and the page size, I would expect to get three or four rows per page, but I'm only getting two. The average page is 54% full.

Is it possible that when SQL Server is getting ready to insert a row, it determines the maximum length of the row rather than the aqctual length of the data, and determines that the row will not fit on the page? This would explain the problem. If not, is there some other explanation?

[758 byte] By [D06147] at [2007-12-19]