In the spirit of Bunnie's exit reviews I'm writing about a bag.
In 2005 I happened to be passing the Moscone Center where lots of events happen, and spotted many people on the street with the bag. It turned out Novell's Brainshare conference was happening inside and that was amongst the swag being given out. The bag looked the perfect size to me and one was ordered online. In the almost decade since, that bag has been with me all over the world for both personal and professional trips and meetings, and has been perfect.
- Size
It is hard to get size exactly right. I wanted something big enough to function as a carry on (eg some clothes, toiletries, books, electronics and laptop) but at the same time being small enough that it easily fits in overhead bins, cars, and with me when I am walking. This bag makes the tradeoffs and gets the size exactly right.
When other passengers have been made to weigh or measure their carryon, I've always been bypassed with the bag.
For my last two laptops I specifically made sure they fit in the bag (just). They were the Lenovo Thinkpad T61 (15 inch) and T430s (14 inch).
- Wheels and extension handle
- It has wheels at the front and a nice long extension handle. The handle has two vertical pieces which makes it very stable and easy to control.
- Straps, grab handle
- There is another decent sized grab handle on top, useful for pulling out of overhead bins or just moving the thing around. There are also two backpack style shoulder straps at the front, hidden behind a panel. Although I never remember using them - it was always wheels or grab handle.
- Plastic bucket
- You can't see this in the picture but the entire bottom is a large plastic bucket with the fabric over it. It is about 15cm deep. This means that if it ever ended up in water, the water would have to be quite deep to actually get into the bag itself. It is nice to be puddle proof.
- Compartments
There are 3 compartments - not too many and not too few. At the back (closest to the camera) is a small compartment suitable for keys, documents, pens etc. There is a nice organizer inside for all these including a zipped pocket and quite a bit of space at the bottom where I would have things like spare contact lenses and an alarm clock.
The middle compartment is for laptops and has a nice padded pouch plus enough additional space for things like mice and power bricks.
The main compartment is suitably spacious. Even when full it kept its shape which meant you could still easily get the laptop in and out.
- Side pockets
- You can see one suitable for water bottles or rolled up magazines. It has a drawstring with a clamp to keep whatever is there from falling out. The other side has zipped pocket - perfect for ear plugs and eye masks.
- Understated but sufficient colour
- The black colour means it doesn't draw attention to itself, but the red trim and panel at the front made it sufficiently noticable that it would get lost in a sea of other black bags or get forgotten in a meeting room.
Sadly it broke earlier this year with the plastic near the extension handle folding over. This causes the main compartment to distort which then does the same to the laptop compartment rendering the whole thing broken (or at least significantly reduced capacity.)
It was the exercise of trying to get a replacement bag that made me appreciate just how perfect this one is. Sadly Novell don't sell the bag anymore, nor could I track down who actually made it.
During my shopping trips to get a replacement I found problems like:
- Not having wheels
- Too large or too small
- Mismatched dimensions (eg really tall but comical lack of depth)
- Nowhere to put a laptop
- Designed to only take small Apple laptops (eg 11 inches)
- Not having easily accessibly external pocket/compartment for travel docs and similar
- No side pockets
- Very inconvenient to take laptop in and out
- Tendency to fall over
- General lack of attention to detail
So far the JWorld Sundance (model RBS-19) has been the least worst replacement, and took a really long time to find.