reviews Tes Ted. Reviewed. veRdic Tized
84 MAXIMUMPC december 2006 december 2006 MAXIMUMPC 85
Y
ou dropped three grand on a gaming
notebook. Are you really going to toss
your prize possession into a cheap
canvas sack to lug it on the road?
A serious investment deserves top-of-
the-line protection against bumps, jostles,
and outright drops. And any quality laptop
bag ought to have plenty of room for a power
brick, cell phone, iPod, and a bit of reading
material. And let’s admit to vanity from the
beginning: The bag ought to look as good as
the machine riding in its belly.
We reviewed six high-end bags and
backpacks, each designed with a notebook in
mind. Here’s how they stacked up.
—Christopher NullACme mAde the Clyde
If you’re the prototypical geek slob that our
research department says you are, then The
Clyde is a lot like your desk: It’s big, disorga-
nized, and easily laden with so much crap that
you won’t stand a chance in hell of finding
anything that isn’t “on top.”
Acme Made’s strangely named messenger
bag is a tough, all-ballistic nylon shoulder bag
that recalls the reason messenger bags were
created in the first place: Its gigantic primary
pouch can hold a ton of stuff. Just keep piling
it all in there (along with your laptop, which
rides in its own included 15.4- or 17-inch
sleeve) until you can no longer get the thing
snapped shut.
Acme pays lip service to the idea of mul-
tiple pockets and dividers: The interior has one
segregated divider in the rear, and the front of
the bag has two zippered and one Velcroedcompartment for smaller items. A cell phone
or water bottle pocket sits to one side. But,
other than a few pen holsters, that’s about it.
This is a very light bag, and there’s mini-
mal padding throughout. It’s up to that pad-
ded interior sleeve to protect your notebook,
though it too seems on the thin side. The
whole bag is so minimalist that it’s difficult to
get it to stand upright. Instead it tends to flop
on its side, spilling its guts like a yellowtail on
all-you-can-eat-sushi Tuesday.
Colors include black, gray, or brown shells
and orange, green, or gold lining. The large
model (which we tested) costs $180, while a
smaller version is $155.tumi GeN 4 FXt B AllistiC
Just because you carry a backpack doesn’t
mean you ought to look like one of the Little
Rascals. Tumi’s Generation 4 FXT Ballistic
Backpack is an upscale satchel that’s
capable of looking just as much at home
on 5th Avenue as it would underneath your
cubicle desk.
While the all-black design is understated
and free of in-your-face accents, its design
is accomplished and exceedingly well con-
ceived. Open the zippers to the primary stor-
age area and the case becomes an enormous
gaping maw. But the case doesn’t fall over.
Clever straps keep it open and upright at
about a 30 degree angle, perfect for fishing
through it while it’s resting on the floor.
The Tumi is easily the lightest bag wetested, but its corrugated exterior shell
makes it quite sturdy. The pockets acces-
sible from the front of the pack create a sort
of air cushion thanks to the carefully molded
shape of the case. That’s good news
because, unlike most of the bags we tested,
the Tumi doesn’t include a laptop sleeve. A
15.4-inch notebook fits fairly snugly inside,
but it does rattle around if the rest of the
pack isn’t filled. Frankly we’d prefer a little
more padding for our rig, especially at this
staggering $275 price tag.spire met A
If you’re planning on taking your 17-inch
notebook to the top of Kilimanjaro, look no
further than the Spire Meta. This bruiser of a
backpack, weighing nearly six pounds when
completely empty, is so cavernous that we
recommend you keep small children away
from it, lest they wander inside and become
unable to find their way out.
Why would you want something the size
of a small refrigerator on your shoulders?
Storage space and security. The Meta has
more cargo space than any other bag we
tested, with three giant primary storage areas
plus a dedicated ultra-padded sleeve for your
17-inch laptop. Frankly, it’s not too tough to fit
four 17-inch laptops in the pack. This isn’t a
bag for the guy going to a LAN party. This is a
bag for the guy who is the LAN party.
As you might expect, the styling is utilitar-
ian (with a full chest and waist harness
for when things get really heavy), though
the Meta is far from ugly. That said, it’s
hardly the right bag for a jaunt to the coffee
shop... unless you’re heading to Kenya to
pick the beans yourself.Excess Baggage
Six high-end bags vie to protect your laptop from the big cruel world
With its utter lack of a skeletal system,
the Acme Clyde is a jellyfish of a bag that
is constantly spilling open.endlessly configurable and with style to
burn, the tom Bihn super ego is our top
pick for folks with standard-size laptops.6
acme made the clyde
$180, http://www.acmemade.com5
tumi gen 4 fxt
$275, http://www.tumi.com7
spire meta
$195, http://www.spireusa.comtumi’s Gen 4 FXt has downtown style
to spare, but without a dedicated laptop
compartment, we balk at the high price.