I'm playing with, and trying to learn, the new software from
Filemaker- Bento. It is a personal database program that is suppose
to be less powerful (?) than Filemaker. I was drawn to purchasing it
because of the integration with the ILife apps. It was advertised as
working with the Address Book, ICal and IPhoto. I also thought it
would be a perfect replacement for using Appleworks databases, and I
could use it to open those files. After upgrading to Leopard, I
wanted to try and not use my old reliable friend- Appleworks, and
learn the new stuff - Pages, and Numbers. But after buying Bento and
using it, I find that it will NOT open my database files. Several
forums have a work-around by converting the old files to a TextEdit
file, and then cleaning them up, and then moving them over to Bento,
but I (and many others) were hoping for a simple solution. I wanted
to post my thoughts in case others in our group had similar plans. I
will say it works GREAT along with my ICal and Address Book. And
after seeing the great looking templates it put your contacts in, I
will never be happy seeing them in the plain, old way again. It also
allows me to search, display, and print contacts, and dates in much
more useful ways. Example- it laid out in a column view, all my
contacts for a certain group (dining - a list of restaurants I like),
I could see them all as a list, with all the entries for phone,
address, notes, etc.. In this way, I could see several of the phone
entries were for home, instead of work. A little thing, you get the
idea. I could make the changes in Bento, and it seamlessly made the
same change in Address Book. Pretty cool! So, I'd recommend it as a
database program for ILife apps, but for now, not as a database
replacement for Appleworks.
Bill Micou
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