Product Reviews

Bento, FileMaker's easy-to-use database application for the 'i' app generation, wasn't quite the replacement for AppleWorks' database program that many hoped it would be, but it had plenty to offer nonetheless. Version 2 adds to the early promise of that debut and show's that it's maturing into a very useful app.

Perhaps the most significant new feature is integration with Mac OS X Mail. While version 1.0 accessed Core Database to enable you to view and edit Address Book records and integrated well with iCal, there was no similar relationship with Mail. In version 2, you can attach email messages to records and view them from within a record's Details window.

The process of doing this highlights another of Bento's new features: the ability to edit a record's layout without resorting to a dedicated layout view. To add email messages to a record, add a field of the type Message List, drag it onto the record, re-size and position it, and then drag email messages from Mail onto the box. These messages are then imported to Bento and can be viewed using Quick Look.

AppleWorks users will be pleased that they can now import tab-delimited text files to Bento, which means Bento can import and export AppleWorks databases relatively easily. Numbers and Excel spreadsheets are now supported natively, so you can import them directly to Bento, and Bento Libraries can be exported in Numbers or Excel format.

Talking of spreadsheets, Bento's Table view now works much more like a spreadsheet. You can click

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in fields and type to add data, hit tab to move between fields, copy and paste data, and fill fields by clicking on one or more fields in a record and dragging the fill handle of the cell downwards. And the new split view means you can keep the table in view on the top half of the window while inspecting the details of the selected record in the bottom half.

Other new features include the ability to view the location of an address in a record in Google Maps, print more than one record per page in Form view and automatically fit columns to the width of the page in Table view. There are 10 additional themes, and templates (themes with layouts) can be exported so other Bento users can use them on their own data.

Bento is friendly enough to enable anyone who has never created a database from scratch before to jump in and get started, while at the same time powerful enough to give AppleWorks refugees the replacement they've been waiting for. Our only real complaint is its performance. On a 2GHz Core 2 Duo iMac with 2GB of Ram, running Mac OS X 10.5.5, it felt distinctly sluggish at times. While this may be acceptable when sorting or searching hundreds of records, it's less so when all you want to do is fill half a dozen fields in Table view.

Also, while the new themes are welcome, they feel very much like more of the same. In other words, if you couldn't find one that you liked before, that's unlikely to have changed in this version. However, on the positive side, Mail integration is very welcome and the spreadsheet-like behaviour of Table view makes it much easier to edit and sort records.

Bento 2 is a solid upgrade to an application with such a natural fit with iWork that we wonder why Apple didn't bring it in house and sell it as part of that suite. There's plenty here to tempt new users and prompt existing owners to upgrade. We'd like to see performance improved and the option to sync Bento data, as opposed to just that which is linked to Address Book and iCal - and perhaps an iPhone app, too. If FileMaker can deliver that in version 3, Bento really will be very good indeed.