> could access a max of 64 kilobytes of RAM

This is incorrect. A COM program had to fit its code and static data into 64K, but it could access as much RAM as existed on the machine.

A related misconception is that the segment registers in COM programs had to have all the same value. This is incorrect as well, as the program once loaded could reset them to any value.

Indeed! First thing the executables generated by my early DOS compilers did was to set up the es: and ds: segments in order to get more space.

Eventually I overcame laziness though, and started to study the EXE file format, which, AFAIR, does not have a "loader", (as Shorel suggested) but just a header describing the layout of the file. I think EXE files tend to be larger, just because they can be larger.

MZ (DOS .exe) requires a loader - smarter than just "copy this whole thing into memory and jump to start", anyway - because it has a relocation table. But, of course, the loader is not part of the executable itself, so it doesn't contribute to its size. I suspect that the reference was to the relocation tables themselves.

> and they itself could be max 64 kb

Minus 256 bytes at the beginning for the Program Segment Prefix (hence why every .com assembly listing usually starts with ORG 100h).