Bento 2

I really like the idea of Bento, a personal, inexpensive database program that runs locally on your Mac. (As opposed to a personal database program that runs on the web – dabbleDB is the winner there.) Filemaker's Bento looks like the winner, and I've been using the first version of the software to perform light database tasks for the last few months.

A little less than a year later, Filemaker has released Bento 2, which looks like a solid update with some much called-for features (direct import of Excel spreadsheets for one) but the results, especially for migrating Bento 1 users, seem to be less than spectacular. Reports of scrambled database forms, slow launch times, and failed database upgrades have the Filemaker support team hopping – and since migrating users pay the same as brand new users (usually existing users of software can count on an upgrader's discount), emotions are running high.

I think I'll stick with Bento 1 until the kinks are worked out of the successor.