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 Location:  Home » Software » Schedule & Contact Management » BentoJuly 25, 2008  
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Bento
Bento

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From: FileMaker
Category: Software

List Price: $49.00
Buy New: $44.99
You Save: $4.01 (8%)



New (8) Used (2) from $33.99

Avg. Customer Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars 25 reviews
Sales Rank: 184

Format: Cd-rom
Platform: Macintosh
Media: CD-ROM
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.3 x 1.1

MPN: TP934LL/A
Model: TP934LLA
UPC: 044866034724
EAN: 0044866034724
ASIN: B00123WD40

Release Date: January 8, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours

Features:
  • Organize all the details of your busy life in one place
  • Manage contacts, coordinate events, track projects, and prioritize tasks faster and easier than ever before
  • Links with Mac OS X Address Book and iCal; Imports spreadsheets and other CSV files
  • Includes ready-to-use templates, and elegant themes designed by Mac artists
  • Just point and click or drag and drop to change the look of any form and see information in a way that makes sense to you

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Editorial Reviews:

Product Description
Bento organizes all your important information in one place, so you can manage your contacts, coordinate events, track projects, prioritize tasks, and more.

Amazon.com
Meet Bento, the new personal database from FileMaker that's as easy to use as your Mac. It organizes all the details of your busy life in one place. So you can manage contacts, coordinate events, track projects, and prioritize tasks faster and easier than ever before.

Manage contacts, coordinate events, track projects, and prioritize tasks faster and easier than ever before.

Substance, meet style
It's never been easier to get organized thanks to built-in links with Mac OS X Address Book and iCal, ready-to-use templates, and elegant themes designed by Mac artists.

Built-in Links to Address Book and iCal
There's no need to re-enter all your contact and calendar info to get started with Bento. It has built-in links to your Mac OS X Address Book and iCal applications.

In seconds, you'll be viewing all your contacts, tasks, and events in beautiful Bento templates that make searching, sorting and organizing simpler and faster than ever before.

Great-looking templates
Bento also comes with more than 20 ready-to-use templates. So you can easily get started organizing just about any kind of information you have--for work, home, school or community projects.

Add beautiful themes with a click
To make your templates look even better, you can add an elegant theme, designed by Mac artists, that suits your style and personality. Themes include coordinated colors, layouts, fonts and text styles that bring style to your templates with a single click.

Help stop spreadsheet abuse
Let your spreadsheet crunch the numbers, and let Bento do the rest.

If you're managing lists in Microsoft Excel or just about any other program that exports to Comma Separated Values, you can import them with a simple drag and drop.

Bento makes it possible to connect related information together so you can see a more a complete picture of everything you're tracking--all in one place.

Bring it together
From contacts and calendars, to projects and events, you can organize just about every type of information you have--and access it instantly--all from one place.

Get the big picture
Bento makes it possible to connect related information together so you can see a more a complete picture of everything you're tracking--all in one place.

Bringing things together to get you organized--that's what Bento is all about.

Find what you need fast
Ever search for music with iTunes? It couldn't get much easier. And Bento carries on the Mac tradition by using familiar iTunes-like searching. You can find the things you store in Bento instantly. From phone numbers for friends in Fiji to deadlines due in December.

Display your information in a familiar spreadsheet-like Table View to see multiple records at once.

Switch to Form View to see one record at a time.

What's your type?
Because Bento is a flexible database, you're not forced into tracking pre-set types of information. You can store virtually any type of information you want in Bento choosing from a variety of field type options.

For instance, let's say you're putting on your company party and all your contacts are already stored in the Mac Address Book. You could simply add a "Checkbox" to your Address Book form to track who's coming, and add a "Choice" pop-up list to store each person's food preference. It's that easy!

See things your way
Just point and click or drag and drop to change the look of any form and see information in a way that makes sense to you.

Set the table, and sort it, too
Display your information in a familiar spreadsheet-like Table View to see multiple records at once. Sort columns with a single click, and get quick stats through the handy Summary Row.

If you use the Mac OS X Address Book, you'll appreciate this new view, because you'll be able to see many contacts all at once.

Forms flow freely
Switch to Form View to see one record at a time. This view is especially useful when entering large amounts of text, like notes from lectures, meetings and conversations.

You can also view different slices of your information by adding as many new forms as you'd like. And each new form can show a different grouping of information, so you can see your data from every angle.

Customize with a click
Resize, rearrange, and regroup to your heart's content. Just point and click to change themes, columns displayed, label positions, text sizes, shading, alignment, and more.


Customer Reviews:   Read 20 more reviews...

1 out of 5 stars Limited   July 18, 2008
 0 out of 1 found this review helpful

DO NOT plan on entering a database of substance. Bento has its limits and when you hit it, in my situation is was 1280 entries you are dead in the water. Bento is for light and very basic use. It is not for those that need more than entering a few household items. I am very disappointed with the software and their support.


4 out of 5 stars Far from perfect, but it's pretty darn good   July 14, 2008
Let's start with what Bento is not. Bento is not the end all be all database program. I deal with and have dealt with some of the biggest and baddest at the enterprise level such as: Oracle, SQL Server, Teradata, and Informix to name a few. So, I really understand what a database should be.

Face it, Bento was made to make databases easy for most users. And on that front, I think it succeeds, and that is why I wanted to get a copy. I wanted a very basic and user friendly database program. And, I thought, if it was easy enough, I would get around to doing some projects that I had put off because I didn't want to devote a huge amount of time completing.

Project 1: I track my work time on a daily basis. For years, I have been doing this in Excel. I knew that moving to a database program would be better but just didn't have the time. After Bento arrived, I jumped in and was able to convert my time tracking to Bento. Now for the downside, there is no reporting capabilities which is a problem when you are wanting to analyze your time. So, I did have to create an export from Bento to load into Excel so that I could do pivot tables. Once I got this set-up, the ongoing updates are easy, breezy. I just export from Bento, go to Excel, refresh the data and then refresh the pivot table. Really, it is just a matter of a few seconds to see the latest and greatest.

Project 2: I had done a bad job of maintaining a home inventory. Bento has a standard template for a home inventory that I just made some minor tweaks to and off I went. I am doing a much better job of keeping track of things and knowing what we have.

Project 3: Expense tracking was also in Excel. I converted it over to Bento and it is in a much more user friendly format now.

Project 4: I wanted to create a project tracking database. So, if I got a call from someone wanting to know the latest and greatest, I could open the page for the project and give a quick run down.

On the downside, I wish there was a better library of templates available. I had to build some things from scratch because there was simply nothing that was even close to what I was seeking. But, since Bento is new, it will take some time for those to appear.

Bottomline - I use Bento just about every day. I have integrated it into my tracking really pretty easily. I use several software packages, and I didn't think that Bento was very hard to pick-up. It seemed pretty intuitive. If you have been through the Office 2007 switch on PCs, I can promise that event was more painful that picking up a copy of Bento. If you don't think in terms of how to organize using a database structure, the built-in templates should be a big help. Once you look at those, it is pretty easy to make some changes if you want just another field to drop one that you will not use.



5 out of 5 stars Bento, very useful and easy to use   June 20, 2008
Bento is of course, Filemaker light. It automatically picks up and creates a bidirectional data base with the information in your Mac address book program. Bidirectional because changes in either one automatically updates the other. I imported information from an Excel sheet with little effort. The excel sheet had to be saved as .csv. That's what I've done with it. The program places the information in a default template and has a variety of other templates that gives the information a professional look. It also allows table view with a single button click.


3 out of 5 stars Nice product but still a limited 1.0   May 29, 2008
I like this product overall. It is easy to use and can do some nice things for simple form based databases. It has nice integration features if you use the ilife tools like contacts lists, etc, but since I honestly don't use the calendar or address book so that doesn't help me.

I used it for some simple tracking DBs, etc. It doesn't to a ton more then a spreadsheet does for that, honestly, except give a nice form interface.

I still like it overall but it needs some beefing up to be a great product.



5 out of 5 stars Bento - a great solution   May 27, 2008
Bento ended up being the perfect datbase solution for my work situation. I'd been looking for one since the discontuance of Apple Works and everything was either too complicated or too expensive or both.

Bento is inexpensive, complete at least for my level of need and fairly inuitive. Once I got the hang of it importing from a spreadsheet database in CSV format was simple an deasy. Definitely woth a shot. Especialy as you can down load a 30 day trial version.


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