Filemaker's Bento goes 2.0

They have officially gone on the record saying they will not fix bugs or patch features that get broken with an OS update. What you buy is what you get. Any fixes will come in the form of a paid (full price) upgrade. Their stated policy on the forums.

I believe the pricing structure for Bento 2 is flawed. How can FileMaker compare Bento's pricing structure to iLife or iWork's. Both of those products have major equivalence to the large and much more expensive software equivalents like Word or PowerPoint. I mistakenly bought the Bento 1.0 family pack, believing the small extra was worth paying to avoid using the same copy twice. I would pay $49 to upgrade the family pack, but not $99. I'm in a quandary as to whether to just buy a single license and leave the second mac with version 1.0 (compatibility issues?) or just keep with 1.0 altogether, meanwhile hoping that Apple adds a database to its iWork suite (probably for $20 extra [fingers crossed]).

Didn't anyone else notice the screenshot used? Anyone else find that "Home Inventory" slightly disturbing?!

I could never justify $50 for something like this. Maybe $15, but $10 or less would be a win.

Try Yojimbo as an alternative and very intuitive lightweight database or Circus Ponies Notebook for the ultimate database in a notebook metaphor. Just depend what you need/like.

The absence of a free or reduced cost upgrade makes me think - and what happens next time, and the next?

Sorry - pricing policy / "how cheap it is" has no relation to upgrade policy - Bento at 49 dollars is expensive --- REALLY expensive when you compare it to iWork at 79 dollars ... and it is arguable that half of what it does is to make ical and address book usable.

I sent this to Bento (needless to say - no response)

Dear Bento

What a pity that you aren't offering a reduced upgrade price to all of us out there that have been using and promoting Bento on your behalf - sending you enhancement requests - helping you debug and generally putting up with not a very good V1 product (good direction - bad execution).

Now - as it begins to take shape - thanks to how many of us (do you know ?) .... we find that version 2 costs the same for V1 owners as if you had just turned up today.

What an excellent thank-you to all the people who have supported you.

Truly - now - think about it - what a great LOST OPPORTUNITY.

Oh c'mon. If you guys think Bento 1 was a beta, then so is this version. Mail integration and a few new themes? I suggest waiting for Bento 3, if you're that worried. I found Bento 1 perfectly reasonable for $50. But of course people expect it to have all the features of FileMaker Pro (sharing, web interfaces, customizable themes), but cost only $50, and free upgrades. I use Bento for trivial, quick jobs, and FM Pro for real work.

I think a 30 day free upgrade is perfectly reasonable for a product in this price class.

Well it is Very Very disappointing that Filemaker is not supporting the guys who invested at the out set, the opinion leader on products, who spread the good word, who do the trials. I for one will not pay the full price for the upgrade.
Come on you guys at Filemaker get it togther

I found out about Free Upgrade (for very recent buyers only) while browsing Filemaker Forum full of ranting angry Bento users .... you still won't find the free upgrade advertised or on a visible Bento page... go to

http://www.bentotrial.com/bento2/Default.aspx

and the details are there. This seems to be a hasty response to consumer anger

I agree. I purchased Bento a few months ago. It fit my need for a simple database, and although it's $50 was a bit of a stretch for my budget, I bought anyways.

The new features hardly warrant a 2.0 upgrade in my opinion, they seem more like bug fixes and needed improvements as others have stated. It now deserves the $50 price tag (in theory... I haven't tried it yet), but I'm definitely not shelling out another $50, as it's overall purpose (which hasn't really changed) wasn't ever worth $100 to me.