Rating:  - Unfinished Beta Product for Sale
WHY do I have to pay $51.45 again for the upgraded Bento?!?! The reason on the site, "... we considered it, but decided to have everyone pay the same price..." is really WEAK! I tried the trial version when it was released, and purchased it in April of 2008. I didn't get much use out of it due to its limited capabilities. Now six months later, that the features have been upgraded and it's now considered more user-friendly, I'm supposed to pay full price again! I don't consider this to be good business practice. Six months of potential use, and no consideration for those of us who've already paid full price.
Lessons learned: "Don't trust FileMaker" or "Don't buy now because you'll get more for the same money in a short period of time" or "You don't want this software THAT badly that you're willing to keep shelling out money to keep it up-to-date".
Rating:  - Should be a ZERO star review
STAY AWAY!
No upgrade price for 1.0 users is pretty poor. The 1.0 release was pretty limited and the early adopters really help drive the development of 2.0 which appears to be much more functional - in essence what the 1.0 should of been. Now it $100 for a dB application with a solid level of functionality. Like I said pretty poor support for your 1.0 adopters.
To be honest the 2.0 should be FREE to anyone that purchased the 1.0 product. They are the early adopters. They are the ones that helped improve the product. They are the ones that evangelized the product. You have screwed them. Yes new features have been added in 2.0 but if you believe that 1.0 was a mature product then your kidding yourself.
Rating: - Crippled Bugware
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.
Rating: - BEWARE - DO NOT BUY VERSION 1
WARNING - Bento 2 is already out, although not yet available from Amazon. Very sadly, the publisher's of Bento have introduced Bento 2 less than a year after Bento, and they want full price, with no special upgrade price and no sympathy for someone who just bought it recently, OR EVEN SOMEONE WHO BUYS IT TODAY on AMAZON!!!
Bento is fun, but was released somewhat crippled. Bento 2 is a marginal improvement in some respects, but everything it provides should have been in the original version. Worse yet, Bento was very slow and Bento 2 is even slower, almost to the point of being painful.
So download the free demo at the FileMaker web site and try this out before buying.
Rating: - I have never given this low of a review for ANYTHING
I am saddened to give a one star review. But the makers of this product have forced me to...I bought Bento 1 and YES, Bento 2 is out. It was slow, awkward and not at all intuitive like I expected. I assumed (hmmm) that there would be a much needed upgrade to speed it up, tie it into iMail etc. properly and flat make it a better program. I trusted FileMaker to do all that. Well, now they have come out with a Bento 2 and offered NO discount for those of us who bought Bento 1 (virtually a BETA version) and helped them learn what was needed to make it a better piece of software. Despite all the outcry from current Bento 1 users, there has been no mention of an upgrade discount...just more slick ads for Bento 2. We have been told they are following the path of iLife, etc. Well, they HAD a viable product before they expected us to pay for full upgrades, NOT trial/brta versions!
It just feels WRONG. I thought it was a bit lame for $49, but for $198 it well, is a REAL rip.
Shame on you, Filemaker, you have lost a LOT of good will. How many Bento 1s DID you sell to where it is worth it to have so many annoyed customers?
Potential buyers...be aware that this is how Bento treats its customers!
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