Apple Mail (+Letterbox+FlagIt!+RocketBox)
Apple Address Book (even though it is pathetic)
BusyCal
Things

I looked and played with:
bdContacts
Bento
Contactizer
Daylite
SOHO Organizer

I've also settled on BusyCal, but still looking for something for Contacts. AB just doesn't have enough flexibility.

If you're still checking this, I'd be interested in hearing, very briefly, why you rejected Contactizer and Bento for your contacts.

Contactizer:
1. Reviews at http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/14807/contactizer-pro with a fair amount of negative comments.
2. This from the Contactizer website: "Top Core Capabilities: Manage projects and track their progress." I don't need to/want to manage projects. I just need a better contact manager.

Bento:
1. It is a database with add-on templates and not a tailored contact manager. So, while there is support for the db, there really isn't any for the contact manager. Any enhancements are yours to do and maintain.
2. I think the Themes are just plain ugly. The vertical spacing default (which cannot be changed (without some very serious hacking)) creates lots of wasted space which means you get to do more scrolling. The colors are hideous (in my opinion). You can only change a theme by hacking. I played with it and then decided I really don't want to be building my own contact manager, I just want to buy one and pound on the developers for new features and bug fixes.

I would buy SOHO Organizer if they had decent support, but they don't. In fact, it appears that support is almost non-existent.

I started using NowX because I moved from NUDC. I stayed with NowX for two reasons:
1. The calendar was quite flexible.
2. The ability to have custom fields for contacts. I started with Now in 1995 and then switched to Act! in 1997 (when I switched to Windows) and then back to NUDC in 2005 and I became used to the idea that, of course, you can have many custom fields. I also liked the tags in NowX.

I came to the same conclusion and purchased BusyCal yesterday. (Was able to get a discount of $9.80 with the code: SCREENCASTS )
I did ask BusyCal how to import a NowX calendar and they said "the AppleScript only converts NUD, not NOW X. Supposedly Now X already syncs with iCal. I'm not sure how but perhaps there is something on some of the Now Software support forums that talks about it." So, here I am!

I would really appreciate a "how to" for importing NowX to BusyCal. Too bad THEY don't know how to do it! Thank you!

Surely there is someone out there who has written just this sort of CRM thing using FileMakerPro. It has all the SW needed for server etc.. There must be an organisation who has done this. Does anyone know???

I did a calendar sync from NowX to [an empty] iCal.
Then I launched BusyCal.
Done.

You should go to list view in your calendar, Go to menu bar "Edit > Select" All to highlight all records. Then choose menu bar "Assign Tags" to assign the Sync tag. Then you can do a sync. Events and tasks with the Sync tag would be the only ones that get synced to iCal.



For integrity's sake, I launched BusyCal and clicked on List view selected the popup menu to show Decade (default is Month). Then I sorted by date and double-checked for duplicate events.....

Apple's sync services have been wonky with a variety of programs.

When I tried out SOHO Organizer and Contactizer Pro, contacts seemed to transfer well (minus the links, attachments, and custom date). But calendar info seemed to be blitzed.

SOHO Organizer only captured the last 3 months from my iCal calendar.

Contactizer tried to sync and made duplicates of my calendar.

Before doing a sync, I would do a SuperDuper clone of your hard drive so that you can just go back.

BusyCal seemed to just see all my data. It's my calendar of choice. It's what I wished Now X would become. Hopefully a contact solution will be coming soon. I'm also hoping that iPhone OS 4.0 will finally show a calendar app that syncs tasks. But I can work around that because I am currently using OmniFocus for iPhone as my task manager.

Thank you so much for the import process! Was able to import my calendar into BusyCal and move forward. BusyCal will have to do.

Wish the print function had more formatting options. I miss my Now 5.3.2!

The BusyCal folks said to use iCal to print for now. Printing will be coming a little later.

going back to separate programs is not an issue for me. BusyCal looks like it will best work for me and that's where i'm leaning for the moment for the calendar side.

but a solution for contacts really is hard. i have a couple thousand contacts, with lots of historical information. but i only sync the ones i most commonly use (a couple hundred). contactizer does not give me the option to pick which contacts to sync (they sync ALL of them). same with bento. anyone with a suggestion? thanks.