A bag for my laptop

I was looking for a bag to carry my new PowerBook G4 12? around in. After spending a while searching, I finally settled on a solution. Here’s what I got. I bought the CourierWare Small Walking Bag as a bag to carry the laptop (which, by the way, impresses me so far - I never thought I’d lose a laptop under a couple sheets of paper). It’s small enough to suit me, and vertical, which were the two main things I was looking for. The bag is also big enough to hold the power adapter, digital camera, hiptop, a paperback or magazine, and a notepad and a couple pens. In other words, it can hold all the stuff that’s normally in my (bulging) jacket pockets plus the laptop. The bag has no padding to protect the laptop though, so it’s not a solution all on its own. At $62.50 after shipping it’s more expensive than I’d like, but I’m still happy with it. It helps that they’ve got a lifetime warranty, and a fairly good exchange policy. Sadly, the CourierWare laptop insert only comes in a horizontal orientation, so I couldn’t get everything from one place. To protect the laptop, I got a Waterfield Designs sleevecase, size 2, vertical orientation. I thought about paying the extra $15 for the flap to further protect the laptop from the elements, but a quick test in light rain yesterday showed me that the flap on the CourierWare bag was good enough, so I don’t regret leaving off the flap. Cost of the sleevecase, with shipping: $45.00. As I told Gary at Waterfield Designs, the reason I didn’t buy his vertgio bag was size. It’s a larger bag than I needed, plus it lacks a flap to protect the contents from the weather. He thanked me for my comments and said that when he used to bike-messenger in Boston, he used a CourierWare bag. The PowerBook Zone has a good list of laptop bags, and it was a very useful starting point, but it wasn’t enough on its own. I ended up stumbling onto CourierWare’s site and the small walking bag looked perfect except for the padding issue. The nice thing is that it doesn’t really look like a laptop bag, either. Something that came as a bit of a surprise benefit to buying a vertical bag is that I can come home with the laptop in the bag, simply open the top flap and the sleevecase and plug in the power adapter without removing the laptop from the bag or case. I hadn’t realized that this would be a handy feature, but after only a couple days, I already appreciate it. In all, it’s over a hundred dollars for something to carry my life around in, but I got just about exactly what I wanted.

Copyright 2009, Dave Polaschek. Last updated on Mon, 15 Feb 2010 14:08:43.