In all the hoopla around the new Mac Pro and Xserve, I almost forgot to mention that FileMaker’s Bento has graduated out of the beta phase and is now available for purchase to anyone who is willing to shell out $49 for a single user license and $99 for a family pack (which constitutes of five licenses). Like all the hip and happening new applications these days, it is exclusively available for users of Mac OS X Leopard only. Tiger users need not apply.
We’ve covered it before (the dutiful elves that we are) but we’ll gladly refresh your memory if you need us to. Pay careful attention this time though.
Bento is a very simple database application that brings together all your contacts, calendars, projects, events and so on into one neatly designed interface for you to work with. There is solid integration with OS X which results in your being able to view and modify the data from several applications (Address Book and iCal are two examples) in a single window. Bento, with its iWork-like user interface, is perfect for those among us who want a database application but find FileMaker Pro to be too complex for their needs.
If it sounds like an interesting application to you, a free trial is available for download from FileMaker’s website.
This is one of the few times that something has launched before it's said release date!
If I remember correctly, the only reason why I dumped Bento was cause it crashed a little too often. I guess I'll give it another chance then...