Bento version 2 has gotten some good reviews. I can’t explain that. In my testing it’s a toy application. I have a large iCal database with about 6,000 events living on a G5 iMac running OS X 10.5.5. This is a relatively large event collection (though it would not stress Outlook at all) and my hardware is dated – so I expected a few performance issues. I did not expect dreadful performance.

I migrated an XP machine to my quad core iMac. I should have power to spare, but startup can take 10 minutes and after that performance is often very slow. Clearly something is wrong, but I can’t figure this one out. If you have version 2 and it’s working, don’t upgrade yet.

Update: I am much more fond of this than when I first tried it. It is definitely a geek tool, but I am, after all, a geek. I have an old copy of Windows 2000 running with SP 6 or so, no antiviral because I don’t give it network access. It runs the Windows apps I need, like Microsoft Access. It can’t handle the children’s games unfortunately, maybe XP would allow a bit better results.

Word and Excel 2008 work reasonably well. PowerPoint 2008 has a longstanding bug that causes intolerable delays on text entry. It may be related to master slide or theme issues for presentations created on PowerPoint 2003. Performance is fine until the bug hits a presentation. There’s no known way to resolve the issue. The bug has been discussed in various settings since 2008. There has been no fix. I don’t think Microsoft is investing in this product.

Word and Excel 2008 work reasonably well. PowerPoint 2008 has a longstanding bug that causes intolerable delays on text entry. It may be related to master slide or theme issues for presentations created on PowerPoint 2003. Performance is fine until the bug hits a presentation. There’s no known way to resolve the issue. The bug has been discussed in various settings since 2008. There has been no fix. I don’t think Microsoft is investing in this product.

I’m very pleased with the size and quality of the product. It’s tiny, with just enough of the unit exposed so that it can be easily grasped and removed. It performs quite well with a good range (I was able to walk anywhere in a 15x15 room without loss of connectivity). The product does come with a CD that contains both the basic drivers as well as the application that I needed to make this headset work with Skype on my Windows XP machine.

I’m very pleased with the size and quality of the product. It’s tiny, with just enough of the unit exposed so that it can be easily grasped and removed. It performs quite well with a good range (I was able to walk anywhere in a 15x15 room without loss of connectivity). The product does come with a CD that contains both the basic drivers as well as the application that I needed to make this headset work with Skype on my Windows XP machine.

I’m very pleased with the size and quality of the product. It’s tiny, with just enough of the unit exposed so that it can be easily grasped and removed. It performs quite well with a good range (I was able to walk anywhere in a 15x15 room without loss of connectivity). The product does come with a CD that contains both the basic drivers as well as the application that I needed to make this headset work with Skype on my Windows XP machine.

I’m very pleased with the size and quality of the product. It’s tiny, with just enough of the unit exposed so that it can be easily grasped and removed. It performs quite well with a good range (I was able to walk anywhere in a 15x15 room without loss of connectivity). The product does come with a CD that contains both the basic drivers as well as the application that I needed to make this headset work with Skype on my Windows XP machine.

I’m very pleased with the size and quality of the product. It’s tiny, with just enough of the unit exposed so that it can be easily grasped and removed. It performs quite well with a good range (I was able to walk anywhere in a 15x15 room without loss of connectivity). The product does come with a CD that contains both the basic drivers as well as the application that I needed to make this headset work with Skype on my Windows XP machine.