Bento
Company/Producer’s name: FileMaker, Inc.
Phone #: 1-800-35-2747
Online address: www.filemaker.com/products/bento
Subject(s): Database application
Interest Level: x_Business x_adult x_college x_High sch. x_anyone interested
Price: $ 49.00 (US)/$99 family pack
Copyright: announced January 8, 2008
Hardware requirements: Mac computer with Intel or PPC G5 or PPC G4 (867MHz or faster) processor / Minimum 512 MB of RAM; 1 GB recommended / CD drive is required for installation of boxed software
Description of program or book: This is a program that has been designed to streamline, glamorize, and organize your life. It will correlate your contacts, track your activities, manage your tasks, and sync them with your iPhone and .Mac account for sharing on the Web. It also scares you upon installation as it grabs your address book and iCal events before you realize it all the while providing you with 20 pre-designed templates for eye pleasing layouts.
What Bento can do for you:
Strengths: One of the strengths of Bento is flexability. The program will organize almost anything and access it immediately. Users will also be happy with the iTunes like searching procedures. Users will be able to drag-and-drop spreadsheets and switch between form and table views quickly while also being able to add additional form views. Customization is the name of the game for Bento as the users can point and click to change themes, columns, labels, etc to suit their needs.
Weakness & Limitations: FileMaker is upfront about stating that Bento is a personal database and not an application for sharing over a network. As a long time Filemaker user I find myself becoming an old dog that is having trouble learning new tricks. Techniques that I utilized in FileMaker seem awkward in Bento. A good example of this is the sort routine. A visual organization of fields in FileMaker seems much more logical than remembering the last column you click in Bento is the first sort field in Bento.
Updates version 1/0v2 include:
* Additional language support
Bento now supports Worldwide English, French, Italian, German, Spanish and Japanese
* Overall stability improvements
Resolves an issue related to exporting Smart Collections in the iCal Events library
Resolves a case sensitivity issue related to automatically completing text in a text field
Resolves issues related to the calculation field
Improves file import
Resolves issues related to related records lists
Resolves issues related to address formats outside of the United States
Resolves several minor issues related to printing forms and tables
* Compatibility
Compatible with Mac OS X 10.5.2 (Leopard)
Comments:
This is a long awaited addition to Apple’s repertoire of applications for the Mac. It will fill a needed void for many Mac users who want to organize the many details of their home and community. It is simple and straightforward with unlimited possibilities. However, I found it to be lacking in many respects. As an artist I would describe it as a sketch for a painting. As an educator, I would term it a rough draft. Then I realize it is just version 1.0 awaiting several revisions and updates as FileMaker defines its place capabilities.
Ratings:
*****Excellent ****good ***average **weak/acceptable *poor
Ease of installation: *****
Ease of use: ***
Documentation: ****
Product support: ****
Packaging: ****
Graphics: ***
Color: ****
Overall rating: ***
Appropriate for: _?__Business _x__Education _x__Personal
Reviewer: Linda McNeil is a Pa. media specialist. Linda teaches several online and classroom courses to adults/teachers for the PA Dept. of Education. Linda is also a professional artist and she maintains her own website (www.brushcolor.com) and several blogs. She is a member of MACS@PACS, MACBUS, MLMUG, National League of American Pen Women, TriState YA Review Committee, and other organizations.