With the new Bento personal database now in the wings, Microsoft Access will soon be way upstaged, and Apple-owned FileMaker may finally have a database that's fully compatible with Leopard.

"Bento puts [Microsoft] Access to shame," said one attendee at Pepcom's Digital Experience event in New York City, summing up a sentiment common among those who viewed vendor-delivered demos of FileMaker's Bento, unveiled just this week.

The Apple-owned FileMaker company is planning to ship Bento during either the MacWorld San Francisco or CES timeframe in January of next year.

Available in pre-release version this week as a free download, the elegant, point-and-click Bento is designed expressly for use with Apple's new Mac OS X v. 10.5 Leopard, as opposed to older versions of Mac OS.

Moreover, users with large volumes of data on hand will probably be better off with FileMaker Pro, a cross-platform database that operates across both Macintosh and Windows, FileMaker staffers acknowledged this week.

Essentially, Bento is meant for quickly managing and organizing personal and business info that runs the gamut from contacts and calendars to projects and events, without any database programming. It comes with 20 pre-designed templates; built-in links to the Macintosh Address Book and iCal, iPhone and .Mac synchronization for information sharing over the Web; an iTunes type of search capability; drag-and-drop import; a ratings field; a variety of different views; and tons of Bento-specific themes.

Bento is so versatile that it's suited to purposes ranging from tracking children's progress at school (for parents) to managing time billing (for lawyers, accounts, and professional consultants), staffers maintained during a demo.

One exhibitor showed how you can easily import a photo into Bento by dragging-and-dropping. CSV files such as spreadsheets can also be imported through drag-and-drop, with no need for mapping. Using Bento's Table View, you can look at multiple records, organized into columns, at just one glance. Through the Form View, you can work with a single record at a time, adding text and dropping in photos, for instance.

And if you're into further personalization, you can easily customize the look and feel of your database with Bento themes such as granite, for example, as well as with Leopard effects such as the Waterfall option.

FileMaker's plans call for shipping the final version of the database for around $49 in January - probably during either MacWorld or CES, after Mac users have gotten a chance to kick Bento's tires a bit.

But why didn't FileMaker decide to announce Bento at one of those two shows, instead of this week in New York City?

"When we reach the right stage in the development cycle, we don't hold back. If the software is ready, we make it available," according to one FileMaker spokesperson.

Meanwhile, though, FileMaker received considerable criticism last month after admitting that its earlier database products weren't compatible with Leopard.

At the end of October, FileMaker released an update for its older software aimed at adding some compatibility with Leopard.