An economic crisis can put many things in an entirely new light – even routine software upgrades. Consider, for example, some recent releases from Adobe and FileMaker.
Adobe’s flagship product is its Creative Suite 4 graphics, web design, publishing, and multimedia packages, which cost several hundred dollars each. However, it also offers a consumer collection, Photoshop Elements 7 and Premiere Elements 7 for Windows, which has a street price of about $120. (The two are available separately, but the bundle is the best deal.)
No, the Elements software doesn’t do everything, or even most of the things, that the CS4 packages do. Photoshop Elements is a picture cataloging and editing program aimed at non-professionals. Premiere fits the same niche for video camera users. Most consumers – myself included – find that Elements fits their needs precisely.
There have been people, though, with a high-end camera or videocam who believed they simply MUST have the full versions of Photoshop or Premiere and perhaps even a CS4 bundle that includes them. In happier times, that was an uncomplicated indulgence. Today, not so much. Not when discretionary incomes are tight and – equally important – when the Elements package has evolved into very cool software.
The early editions of Elements were essentially copies of Photoshop or Premiere with key features disabled. The 7 versions have adopted distinctive and more user-friendly interfaces than the pro versions and automate some key tasks. In truth, Elements let you do your tasks much more quickly than the pro varieties.
The same principle applies to Mac users with FileMaker’s Bento database program, now in Version 2. The update adds a couple of features I find essential: the ability to import Excel files (which most users employ for databases until they step up to a dedicated database program) and to include mail messages in your database.
More to the point, it is a database that doesn’t look or feel like a database. Its look is intentionally modeled after iTunes or Apple’s mail and calendar programs, which set industry standards for ease of use. To create a relational database in Bento (a powerful database management tool that ties one set of data to another) you don’t do any complex programming as you do with more elaborate database software. You simply drag some data from one Bento file to another and – poof! – you’ve got a relational database.
Bento does not have anything like the power of the company’s professional FileMaker Pro 9. But then again its street price is $45 compared to $261 for FileMaker Pro. There are times for business use when I simply have to have FileMaker’s capabilities. For personal use, however, Bento has all the database capability most of us need.
In these times, taking a step down in software power can be a step up in sensible computing.
