I have a soft spot in my heart for FileMaker Pro. It’s a flexible, easy to use, and surprisingly powerful cross-platform database application that does many things well. For years I’ve used FMP to handle a wide variety of tasks, but since I’ve been in law school I haven’t come across many uses for it. So it was something of a surprise to stumble upon the FileMaker Campus Productivity Kit. This free stand-alone FileMaker app is designed specifically for students (ostensibly high school and undergraduate in particular).

The Campus Productivity Kit (CPK) includes a contact manager, a notes repository, a group task manager, an event coordinator, and a to-do list. Unfortunately, the CPK is a database app, rather than an app powered by a database. It feels clunky. Much of the screen real estate is wasted, and moving from task to task can be disorienting.

FileMaker Campus Productivity Kit screenshot 1

This shot of the Notes layout is a good example of what I mean. The area in the pink box contains user-entered information. The rest of the screen is taken up by FileMaker navigation, CPK navigation, and Notes navigation. Even with Exposé and Spaces, screen real estate is valuable. CPK wastes a lot of it.

Unfortunately odd behaviors abound in CPK. Click on the Document field in a Document entry, and an a voice record dialog pops up. Mouseover the “record” button, and the button doesn’t change color from gray to red as it would in most other voice recording tools. But click on the button and it will record your voice. If you stop recording, the Document field will display a spiffy little audio icon, indicating (presumably) that the recorded audio exists in this field. Double-click on the audio icon to play back the audio and CPK gives no response.

There are just too many of these sorts of bizarre and inexplicable behaviors in the CPK. If you’re running the CPK in OS X 10.4, you may get fed up and decide to quit. That’s exactly what I did, but CPK wouldn’t let me. I had to force quit every time.

FileMaker Campus Productivity Kit 2

After upgrading to Leopard, I tried the CPK again. This time I was able to quit without a problem. As with the other inconsistencies in the CPK, the cause is a mystery.

The CPK is marketingware. You have to provide FileMaker, Inc. with contact information when you download the CPK. When you quit the CPK, a nice little message pops up, reminding you that the full version of FileMaker Pro lets you do all kinds of wonderful things. I’m all for FileMaker making a buck, and there’s nothing wrong with putting out a free product in order to attract future purchases. But these days there’s a lot of competition, even in the seemingly narrow market of software for students.

If you’re looking for an all-in-one application designed for students, I’d pass up the FileMaker Campus Productivity Kit, and give Assignment Planner 3 or Schoolhouse 2 a look.

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