For all the Mac fan-boys out there that have been using ­Filemaker’s ­popular personal database ­manager, Bento, here’s some good news: Bento 2 has just come out. So let’s have a quick look to see if it’s worth the move to the new version.

Bento integrates some basic functions that users will use often, like email in Mail, contacts in Address Book, a to-do list, some word ­processing and maybe a spreadsheet. But the real benefit of Bento 2 is as a ­personal database. With Bento you can access your Address Book, for instance, without opening it, but you can also add fields that would not ­normally be available. So you could, for instance, have an attendance list for a party and then link that to your ­Address Book.

Some of the obvious ­improvements to Bento 2 are the way it handles data ­import and export, the way you can customise forms “on-the-fly” and the ability to share your libraries with other Bento users.

The first version of the software was interesting, but this version is actually quite practical and useful. R800 (incl VAT) from www.
phoenixsoftware.com.