The Bento Book: Beauty and Simplicity in Digital Organization

Bento 3 for Mac is a personal relational database, but several users can log into there own account. The success of software like Bento, multi-user FileMaker or Oasis is the ease with which the developer can assimilate the product and make it work for him. The author did his best to be clear with partial success. The book starts off on a detailed general description of each of the following chapters. The window screen-dumps have letters that are too small. It takes too long to write how to customize the interface and link related displays (records). So you cannot do without hands-on experience and eventually (too late) you find out it was simple after all, but by that time you have absorbed many other features that perhaps were less relevant for you. The winning product is not the most powerful one, but the one that is easiest to study and implement. In case of doubt you are forced to try out your development in two or three products, which triples development time.D. Vos

I purchased this book for the very positive reviews it has regarding its usefulness in learning to use Bento, especially because some reviews extolled the book's coverage regarding many-to-many (M-T-M) relationships in Bento (Chapter 11). While I wasn't disappointed with its explanation and samples, it does not directly address the many-to-many relationships capability of the program except in the form of an example that happens to employ the feature. While all relational databases are capable of creating complex M-T-M relationships, I have yet to find one that simplifies creating M-T-M relationships as Bento does. (It would be nice if M-T-M relationships could be created as easily with FileMaker.) The problem is that the book does not explain this process very well; it just provides an example that happens to create an M-T-M relationship. I think a future edition of this book could treat M-T-M more directly and could better explain this powerful capability of Bento.

This is a good intro book to Bento.It's only good (and not great) because it's not significantly different from the documentation on the Apple site.I can only reason that Bento is not a really complex application and there is only so much to say.

This software takes the place of Appleworks Data Base - but in my opinion will never replace it. After using Appleworks - there are so many options not available in Bento. - It work well making labels - but I still wish for the old way

Bento is such a wonderful database program for the Apple Mac.This book will assist you in utilizing it even better.NOTE TO AUTHOR: The screenshots are a bit small to see sometimes. Please make them larger, in color, and more readable in the next edition.Recommended to Bento users.

Although you do not need this book to operate Bento because the program is highly intuitive, it is great to have it in order to improve your performance and in discovering hidden features that can help you a lot.

A good thorough manual for a product that didn't come with same. I appreciate having it.

Excellent database program, especially the way it integrates with the Macintosh operating system and core programs.

I have only recently started to use Bento and only recently discovered that the facilities I wanted were only available as add-ons from the web site.Since i am retired I only need limited options though i imagine the range of options would be useful to any busy working individual.

new and useful

...leider auf dem deutschen Buchmarkt nichts ähnliches erhältlich ... aber freuen wir uns über den Superpreis und die schnelle Lieferung :-)