I’m notorious for being late for meetings and events. It’s not on purpose or that I’m unorganized. I’m just apparently not organized enough. In fact, for meetings, I almost always tend to say “-ish” after the time we will be meeting. They know that I’ll be late. So reviewing something like Bento 3 for the Mac and Apple iPhone comes across as either a blessing or a stop being so gosh darn late hint.

Bento 3 is made by the same people that make FileMaker Pro and FileMaker Server. Heavy duty products that I’ve used in enterprise level deployments and projects in the past. Of course, that might mean this product for the average desktop user will be boring, staid and ultimately deemed too complex for daily usage. Wrong. The desktop application is a joy to use.

It’s quite refreshing that the desktop application isn’t impossibly hard to use at all. It really puts you in the mind of the other Apple provided apps like iCal, iTunes and iPhoto and just as easy to approach. Mentioning iPhoto and iCal, within moments Bento will synchronize with your iPhoto photos, Address Book contacts and iCal events.

Setting up a meeting in Bento is as easy as setting one up in iCal. For instance, I have a 5pm meeting with a company tomorrow… one I actually intend on being on time for as well.

Within moments, set up, synchronized with my iCal – which my Apple iPhone connects to as well, and I’m done. And Bento does support synchronization with an Apple iPhone via wifi as well as synchronization when connected to the computer via USB. And the Apple iPhone application is also as easy to use, I’ve created and added items to my existing libraries that quickly keep me organized in all details of my digital life.

And it’s not all about meetings either. You can set up: To-Do Items, Recipes, Projects (important for me), Inventory, Time Billing, Digital Media (for collections of CD’s, eBooks, et al), TV & Movie collections, among many other options. Seriously, you can set up and organize just about every aspect of your life.

Good part? You can also set up everything as it exists on the desktop also in the Apple iPhone application as well. Yes… you can organize yourself on the go if you have to or if you happen to be on a PC. But having both the Mac desktop and Apple iPhone applications – I sorta dislike typing on the iPhone for large amounts of text – it just works well.

And yes… in the last couple of weeks, I know what movies I have at home as well as my what projects I have going on, the level of completion for each project deliverable and even have set up a couple of meetings that I have been on time for.

Shocking… I know.

I can truly state that Bento by FileMaker is an application that you need to add to your must buy list. It retails for $4.99 for the Apple iPhone via the iTunes Music Store and $49.99 for the Apple Mac desktop.

The only con(s) I have for this application is that while it is deceptively simple, it can get very complex in the creation of a blank library to suit your needs that are not covered by the library templates is somewhat time consuming. There are downloadable, update-able templates that FileMaker and the users of Bento make available but it would almost be a patience killer to create a full functional template solely on the Apple iPhone. The desktop application makes somewhat short work of that.

It is Mac only, so there is a slight detractor for being limited to OS X. Buy it. If it can make a habitual late person as myself on-time and actually help organize the bits of my life that I sorely need to add more organization to and do that easily… you just need to buy this.

Rated: 4.5 out of 5 (Must Buy)

[ FileMaker ] [ Bento 3 ] [ Related: RTL Reviews ]