Customer Reviews

Bento - Complete Package - 1 PC - CD - Mac (40129I)

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

Bento is a smart, convenient database for the non-power user. Within its limitations it's excellent, interacting automatically with other apps (like iCal and Address Book) on the Mac. It also simplifies database use in general for those of us intimidated by full FileMaker.

Unfortunately, it lacks some capabilities a lot of ordinary Mac users will want - primarily the ability to sync data among multiple Macs. If you keep Bento on your desktop you can't readily sync its data to the same app on your laptop, or vice versa. Makes it tough for use in a mixed environment.

Online discussions have highlighted this shortcoming, and we can hope the first revision will overcome this limitation. Meanwhile, if you do all your computing/database use on a single machine, Bento's fine.

This is a fine product from Filemaker. BENTO creates an easy-to-use and colorful interface and has creative and well-laid out forms for data input.

Creating and saving new databases is easy, and it's instant interface with your Mac's Address Book and iCal will either come as a blessing or a complete annoyance right out of the box, depending on your level of perceived confidentiality of things like your personal Address Books. It can be removed, but it's there by default.

Those reared on MS Access or dBase will find that there are some idiosyncracies to the way FileMaker works (and by extension Bento). Once you learn their system of creating and naming fields, and how they relate to one another, you will soon be off cataloging all your books, CD's and looking for other projects to organize.

While this isn't as fully featured as Filemaker, it will serve 90 percent of data base users well. There is some rumor that it might eventually serve as the database interface for the iPhone when applications are one day allowed -- for now, it works only with Address Book and iCal for your iPhone, despite their advertisement that it has an iPhone interface -- it does not -- it merely sync's back with your Address Book/iCal which then syncs with your iPhone.

Easy to use, sharp Mac-familiar and Mac-aware interfaces, and colorful creative layouts make this a sharp day to day database program for those who are tired of the line-by-line spreadsheet approach to database management.

Bento was released by the makers of FileMaker Pro with a very specific purpose. Interestingly, Bento was the name given to a layer in Apple's visionary OpenDoc architecture launched with System 7.5 in the mid 1990s.

Bento is a personal (as opposed to "enterprise" or networked) database that's meant to be as easy to use as the Mac itself. It has a carefully-identified set of features. These run parallel to those of iWork's Pages and Numbers. It could have been called i(Data)Base to aim at a comparable niche in the market. Bento complements Pages and Numbers nicely. The criticisms that some users (and reviewers) leveled at Bento, that it lacked, for example, scripting, Automator and network support, miss the point. It was never intended for those sorts of uses - or those types of users; look at FileMaker Pro for such extended power.

Bento was specifically designed and released without such features in order to concentrate on the less-experienced consumer and SOHO user. Some missing areas of functionality might be useful to the non-specialist user. On the whole, though, the balance between price and feature set, not to mention features, means that Bento can be safely recommended.

Bento is designed to accomplish everyday tasks using a pleasing and straightforward template-based interface The very fact that it is simple, has only one window, and just the right number and design of a few uncluttered menus adds to its accessibility and effectiveness as a flexible and powerful tool.



It only takes a quick glance at the lively, comprehensive and very well supported and moderated Bento forum to see how easy it is to achieve sophisticated date calculations and many-to-many implementation; Bento's apparent simplicity can be deceptive. Bento Users is another useful site. The documentation that comes with the product is excellent.

Everyday
FileMaker has compiled a list of some of the more likely projects that Bento can handle. These include:

* what FileMaker, Inc. calls "virtually unlimited" contact details
* coordinating events, parties, and fundraisers
* tracking projects, assignments, and deadlines
* prioritizing tasks; Bento has been used successfully in a Getting Things Done task management context
* inventories, donations, and items for sale
* track hours worked, payments due, invoicing
* rate service providers and sellers
* libraries for music, movies, and media
* store files and photos related to projects and events

and, rather cryptically, since this ought to be part of any good data model:

* connect related information together to see more details.

There are ample standalone products to achieve many of these tasks - Project Managers like OmniPlan and task management - the same company's OmniFocus. Bruji's outstanding BookPedia and CDPedia. There are dedicated time management and billing/invoice suites like TimeNet Pro - though none without some flaw; and iPhoto, Address Book and iCal themselves, with the last two of which Bento integrates closely.

It is what it is
So the criteria for MyMac's evaluation must not be, What's missing from Bento? Rather, how well does this reasonably-priced and robust Leopard-only product do what it's been designed to do?

First and foremost, then, is a courageous - and largely successful - attempt to make database design and management accessible to those who are not specialists or experts in such software, but who still have demanding needs such as some of those just mentioned.

Bento's main window consists of three panes:

The leftmost pane is the Source List of all your data Libraries. Libraries are Bento's top organizational level - like iPhoto 7's "Events." One Bento Library is for one set of data or project. Under these in the Source List are Bento's Collections; these are like iTunes' Playlists - subsets of the data in the Libraries. Then Smart Collections behave just as you would expect: they're Views updated in real time and as your filter criteria - or the records that matches them - change. You might, for example, want to create a Smart Collection of all unpaid invoices - as they get paid, they disappear; or of all unsold artifacts in a craft store - as they are sold, they disappear.

The records area is in the middle and is the largest pane. Data can be presented as a form (an individual record) or table of as many records as will fit into the space. You can have more than one form for any Library (each may display different fields - in different orders). This is emphasis on the user experience again; it drives the way you work. Each view is satisfactorily editable - columns can be dragged horizontally for display; you can chose which you will view too. The principles, of course, are analogous to those in FileMaker's "Align" routines and fit well with the sophisticated controls that Bento offers.

The Associated fields list for each Library is on the right. Fields are created here and dragged and dropped onto the Records area. There are only three attributes for each. There is also control over how many of these three panes will appear - you can focus on what you're doing.

This is a familiar interface; and it preserves the metaphors for data handling on which Bento rests. Similarly, searching, sorting, and summaries are all swift and intuitive. Searching can be very sophisticated and saved as a Smart Collection.

Note, though, that this means that there's no concept of separate datastores in Bento. All the data which you use Bento to maintain is managed in one place. You can still share Libraries with other users. Yet if you organize your data according to "domains" within your life (household, work, hobbies, friends, you may find it a disadvantage to access it all in and from one place by launching the Bento application itself as opposed to separately-located data files. On the other hand, this is very much in keeping with current Mac practice: it is the way that iCal, iPhoto, iTunes, iWeb (though not Pages or Numbers) all work. More evidence of the perceived target audience; for them it is assumed the task in hand is more important than file names, file management.

Data Types
Given these intentional restrictions, the substantial variety of data types (nineteen of them) which Bento handles is impressive: basic text, numbers, dates, drop-downs, Booleans, graphics, sounds, movies, ratings, addresses, phone numbers and e-mail addresses and more. There's also a FileMaker-like calculation field which can, for example, concatenate text and multiple fields values as well as perform simple mathematical operations. Inevitably there will be some function missing for someone, but on the whole it's comprehensive - and very easy to use.



Templates
For all its transparency, Bento is not a glorified Wizard. Fields can be controlled - use drag and drop. Fields are rearranged and resized with the mouse - usual Mac style. Some positioning and alignment of text is possible using a toolbar - though probably less than most people will come to want: five text sizes, no choice of fonts. One of the biggest hurdles that the marketing of Bento has to overcome is to make it plain that these are flexible means to an end - although the (new) user's first contact with the program will be the 20 templates that come with the software. These templates are shells; they are not one and the same as the data which they are used to present. If the designers of Bento have understood just what it is that a majority of users want in terms of the payoff between interface and ease of use as opposed to in depth functionality, then they have surely got a winner on their hands. The number of downloads (a quarter of a million) in the first few months since Bento became available suggests that is the case.

Address Book and iCal integration
By default Bento has Libraries for contacts, events, and tasks. These are the same as those in Leopard's Address Book and iCal; they are not synched. Although these Libraries can be removed - "Disconnected" - from Bento in its "Home" menu, to do so is to lose access to those applications' data. What's more, to edit in Bento - or worse delete - data that's derived from Address Book and iCal is to lose it directly from those same applications actually outside the Bento environment. Integration is tight: you could drag and drop a set of contacts from the Address Book Library right into Bento's Source list to create a Collection. This "disconnection" could usefully be supplemented by a preference letting you work from a duplicate and/or advising you that you could conceivably lose permanently (unless backed up) data of which you might have thought you were only working on a copy.

Import-Export
Bento supports only CSV (Comma Separated Value) for import and export of data, although there are ways aplenty to convert that after or before the fact. So that's a limitation only inasmuch as you may need another utility and two steps. The importer is drag-and-drop then Wizard-based and worked very well in testing. The Wizard asks which values from the file to be imported should correspond with which fields in Bento.



Relations
The way that Bento handles relations - the fields in other tables whose data you need to appear in the current one - is one of the program's main limitations: it's not a conventional relational database. But, again, it's an approach designed to give the greatest likely desired power with the simplest steps.

In your "local" Library you create a field of type "Related Records List"; then you indicate from which Library you want to use data. Dropping that field on your form displays a small empty table corresponding to the "remote" Library. You click the "Add related records from a list" icon at the bottom of the inset table to see actual data. Bento displays the corresponding list of records from the associated library. Changing records in the one changes them in the other. Deleting a record in the "local" Library only deletes it only from the Related Records List (the "local" dataset) and not from the associated Library. This more closely follows the practice of removing a record from a Smart Folder, Collection or Playlist. It's a way of preventing mistakes - although not entirely logical, until you're used to it. It's also another example of ease of use; accessibility takes precedence. Note, too though, that Smart Collections cannot include data from related tables. That may be a significant restriction for some.

What is likely to be a real drawback, though, is the fact that by "Related Records" Bento means essentially a "Portal" to all the records in the "remote" Library. There is no concept of a "Join" using Primary and Foreign Keys. This means that you cannot be selective in the way you relate and view such records.

Conclusions
Bento is a package. A compromise. MyMac's advice is that - after reading this review - you match what it can do against your needs. Almost certainly you may have requirements which Bento seems unable to meet. But look closely. Sure, its interface is user-friendly - and more important, perhaps, Bento itself is easy to use. But this doesn't mean it's in any way crippled and "less than" comparable databases of this level of complexity - relational features aside.

It's much closer to Pages, Numbers, iPhoto, iTunes in feel and scope than it is to FileMaker. But prolonged use for this review has revealed that Bento can easily be made to do more than might be apparent even from glancing familiarity with the delightful sophistication of the interface.

Given some of the things that Bento can do, there's a remarkably high ratio between effort and result. Whether or not it's for you will depend firstly on whether you have Leopard. Then on your data handling requirements: total size of data set, complexity of relations and perhaps the way (or whether) you use iCal and Address Book. Then you should decide whether one of the absent features (scripting, full control over template fonts, a missing calculation, say) rules it out.

For many users the extremely pleasing appearance of Bento will be a winner. How nice to be able to work in a fully Mac-like environment using an inventory of - car parts.



A balance has been struck: users with complex, evolving and intricately relational databases may still be best with FileMaker Pro. Those for whom the lure of an elegant user interface is important and/or who want a direct equivalent of Numbers, Pages and iPhoto/iTunes and/or seamless integration with iCal and Address Book should look seriously at Bento. Download the trial, use it carefully and draw on the many sources of online help, remember its very reasonable price, decide whether you'll be able to make Bento do a variety of things for you larger than the dedicated software mentioned at the beginning of this review can do - and see!

Pros: the interface - it's good-looking, simple and easy to use; many data types supported; integration with Address Book and iCal; templates work with many types of file; works with iPhone and .Mac

Cons: the interface - the changes you can make to its appearance are somewhat limited; poor relational capabilities; mass updates to records not supported

MyMac.com Rating: 4 out of 5
Originally published at : [...]

I'm a long-time FileMaker fan, who has watched with amazement as programers create sophisticated Filemaker solutions in record time. I'm not a programmer. So the promise of Bento -- a program that could significantly extend the usefulness of Leopard's Address Book and Calendar with no programing struck me as a great idea. I am a recent switcher from Windows and Outlook and while I am generally impressed with Mac Address Book and Calendar these 2 programs do not offer many important features found in Outlook (Neither does Entourage in Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac Home & Student Edition.

Bento promises interoperability with Address Book and Calendar, but it is not complete field-for-field interoperability. For example, let's say you have images and photographs in your Mac Address Book. You expect the images to show up in Bento, just like the address and phone information. Wrong! Bento expects you to re-import every image into Bento. I have thousands of photos in my Address Book, and it would take hours to do this.

Bento is based on the Filemaker database, so you would expect users to be able to link one person in a contact record to any number of other people. Wrong again! While Outlook supports this very useful feature, neither Address Book nor Bento can empower you to do this. This is a significant shortcoming, as users tend to remember people and events by recalling other people at an event. For example, you remember you met a certain person through David Smith, but you can't remember her name. But if you had her linked to David in your database you could easily find her -- and if her picture happened to be in that record, even better! Similarly, you should be able to link calendar events to people. Outlook users who use these feature come to love them, and it's also one reason why Chapura software's KeySuite for Outlook Synchronization program is so popular on the Palm -- it supports all these Outlook features that out-of-the-box Palm Contacts does not. The Mac world would greatly benefit from both desktop and iPhone software that did this. We would be smarter and more productive!

I hope FileMaker addresses these shortcomings in future Bento releases. Filemaker is capable of writing truly wonderful software. But for me, Bento is a huge disappointment, and should have been much better. I am hoping that NightHawk, currently under development from NOW software, might do this trick if Filemaker does not step up to the plate. If not, I may try NOW's aging Now Up-to-date & Contact V5.0 (Mac) product.

Bento is not a pro's database. If you expect the features of Filemaker or Access you'll be disappointed. But the last time I looked those programs were more than 4 times as expensive and targeted to an entirely different audience. For what it is and what it costs, Bento is pretty (expletive deleted) good. It's easy to use, easy to learn and well integrated with Address Book and iCal. With that integration it can quickly be massaged into a capable project management database. For those missing the database in Appleworks it is a definite upgrade.

I wanted a bird watching database that would include photos, recordings of songs, places, sighting dates, descriptions, related species and miscellaneous notes. I'm collecting information, not doing calculations this is a nice fit.

Within 45 minutes of installing the program I had my forms ready and was entering data. Being a designer, I went back and prettied up my forms a bit but that wasn't necessary. I went back and looked at the tutorials later and they seem pretty good. My first inclination was to build the db in MySQL and put a web front end to it but that would be a lot of work. Bento was just what the doctor ordered. Bento is a little funky in the way it does joins but is a kind of relational database. But then I didn't want to mess with SQL anyway.

I would like to see some Applescript capabilities and a bit more flexibility in printing reports. I haven't tried to integrate Bento with Automator. With no Applescript dictionary, I'm not hopeful. But scripting a database is not something I would expect the target market for this app to even think of, or if they did, they would run screaming in terror.

Looking at the negative reviews all I can think of is that people were looking for a bargain Filemaker and not considering Bento on its own merits and in light of its intended market.

The idea of Bento is great, however, it's implementation and customer service leave much to be desired. Before buying either Bento 1 or 2 make sure you check out the user forums at the Filemaker site. One of the things that attracted me to Bento was Address Book integration. However, a bug in Bento 1 makes new contacts entered through Bento unusable with other programs that integrate with Address Book. This bug is fixed in Bento 2, but why should purchasers of Bento 1 have to pay an additional $50 to fix a defective piece of software. Filemaker refuses to commit to fixing the bugs for version 1 users. For other bugs check out the user forums.

One aspect of databases is the ability to get information out of the database in the form of reports that are printable. However, although Bento 2 boasts of improved printing, being able to set a margin for something that is little more than print screen is a wild exaggeration. If you wish to print labels you'll have to fire up Address book or export the data to another program.

Some of the so called improvements from version 1 to version 2 are being met with users requesting a return to version 1 or at least an option to do so. Form layouts that neatly fitted in version 1 now requiring scroll bars. Check box fields are huge without the ability to reduce them to previous size. With this came the ability to edit forms with out having to put the form into edit mode; who in the world thought that editing forms was difficult in version 1? Now, it is incredibly difficult to even grab a Check box, despite their huge size, to move it without actually changing its status from checked to unchecked or vise-versa. And users are faced with having to be careful not to accidently grab a field and reposition it on the form. Filemakers answer to all this: "I've passed it on to Developers."

Yes, they've introduced more templates and themes, yet after a year of users requesting a simple white theme with the ability to select fonts, users are still waiting and have been told once again "we've passed it onto the Developers."

Although Mac users expect Mac software to be intuitive, after reading through the pages in the user forum one will discover a constantly recurring theme: when someone intuitively went to do something with the program, it wasn't there. They then posted a question to the user groups assuming they must have just missed it, only to find out that they didn't miss it, it truly wasn't there. This of course was met with an attempt for a work around solution and ultimately with a "I'll forward this to the Developers."

Is Bento2 faster than Bento1? That's what the ads claim, yet if one checks the user forums they'll discover an admission that the Address Book integration part is actually slower.

With no discounted upgrade path being offered to Bento1 users, it is no wonder that the resentment towards Bento and Filemaker as a company continues to grow. Especially, when you receive email ads from Filemaker quoting the spectacular reviews it is getting from the journalistic world. All I can say is it certainly does payoff to advertise. One reviewer had the audacity to claim in regards to Bento, "if it ain't broke, just try to make it better." The reviewer clearly has spent no time in the user forums at Bento.

The saddest part of all is the deafening silence emanating from Filemaker. Two weeks after perhaps one of the biggest customer service screw ups in the industry, Filemaker remains mute to it's users leaving the tech support personnel in it's user forums to take the heat without any resolution to offer the customer except something like "you are not being ignored, they are hearing all of your concerns, but I have nothing that I can tell you at this time." Perhaps they are waiting to see if they can sell enough new product to warrant simply ignoring their existing user base.

New to Bento? Then download the trial, but give it the full 30 days before you buy. The first week or so you will find the program fun, but then you'll start running into things that you would like to do with your data that you can't. However, don't fall into the trap of thinking that a fix is just around the corner - the corner is along way off and may cost you an additional $50 to turn.

They need to put this in the description so that someone without Leopard won't buy it. I tried the beta of this, and really liked it. I have used FileMaker, but don't really need the power for most things. I still use AppleWorks for most of my database needs. This is the first program that comes close to filling the void they left when they decided to abandon AW.

As a simple tool for setting up lists that can reference data that exist in various files (very simple relationships), Bento serves a useful function, but its report generation capabilities are very limited and can be quite frustrating. Nonetheless, given the veritable dearth of decent database software for the current Imac series, it is a welcome addition.

I love this new product from FileMaker, who happen to be owned be Apple. The integration with the Leopard system and applications make this a really, really great product. The UI is purely Apple, like iTunes. After using the beta for awhile, this has become a staple of my daily computer work. Even the beta was very stable, so I'm sure the final release is to. Note: this is a simple on-board database for single computer use, not for a complex networking setup. For the appropriate uses, this is great stuff that makes Windows-based equivalents look like trash (not unusual for a Mac app). Great stuff from the masters of DBs! And a great price!

I have a major love/hate feeling about this product.
Many users are upset over the release of Bento 2. First of all because Filemaker has left us high and dry. No bug fixes to ver 1, and NO UPGRADE POLICY!!
This database is very limited. There are no relational links, only "representations" of other data. If you intend to use this in a business you are out of luck, It is fine for making a home inventory or planning a party or other "Soccer Mom" stuff.
The interface is so friendly and beautiful you want to use it, but that's on the surface. Underneath the pretty face it is quite shallow.
Version 1 users (like me) had such high hopes for Bento 2 and were shocked and disappointed with this release.
Be aware the product listed here on Amazon is the original version. DO NOT BY THIS! Look for Bento 2 which was released a few weeks ago.
My rating of one star reflects how I feel about the way Filemaker does business. I will NOT be paying another $50 for this poor excuse for an "upgrade". Should they release "Bento Pro" or a contemporary version of Filemaker Pro I would invest. Filemaker 9 looks like it came out with Mac OS9 - needs a serious facelift, or to be honest rebuilt from the ground up. Hey Filemaker there's a new thing called Cocoa. Check it out.

Excuse my rant, back to the review. I absolutely love the way this product integrates with ical, mail and the mac address book. Filemaker claims Bento is compatible with the iphone. That is VERY misleading. Its pretty much a lie.

The table view that now works so much like a (sortable!) spreadsheet is wonderful. Import/export is vastly improved, but reports and printing are weak. I am never able to use my data the way I want. There is always a compromise or work-around involved.

My wish is to record my billable time and expenses on my iphone and drag or paste that information right into an invoice. WHY IN THIS DAY AND AGE IS THAT NOT POSSIBLE?? Oh how I long to be free of MS Money or Quickbooks for my business!