Thursday, July 20, 2006
RoadWired's Skooba Seventeen+ Laptop Bag
Posted by Jason Dunn in "HARDWARE" @ 08:00 AM
Figure 8: A close-up of the zippers that expand or contract the main laptop storage area.
Figure 9: Unlike every other RoadWired bag I've owned, my big 17" laptop slides in and out of the bag easily, without requiring any force. That's a very good thing.
Figure 10: The interior of the laptop zone featured RoadWired's "secret sauce": the Air Square™ protection system. I haven't dropped my laptop in the bag to test it, but the system looks like it would certainly help protect a laptop.
Figure 11: There's a zippered flap that opens up and reveals a mesh web perfect for a water bottle, a can of pop, etc. I didn't have one handy, so let's pretend that can of compressed air is drinkable, ok? ;-)
Figure 12: The back of the back has a zippered pouch that I use to carry magazines or other paperwork, and a luggage strap (secured by velcro) that you slide over the carrying handle of rolling luggage.
Figure 13: My one and only complaint about this bag was the fact that the the left zipper on the main front compartment would snag almost every time I opened it. Because that's the compartment I acessed the most while traveling, it quickly became irritating. It was snagging on some excess fabric, and my first attempt to trim it with scissors resulted in quite the mess (ballistic nylon doesn't cut cleanly). When I swtiched to my Swiss Army knife scissors, I cleaned it up easily - and no more snags. I contacted RoadWired about this, and they had never heard of the problem with any of their other bags. They even went through some of their stock looking for the problem and didn't find anything. Since I've never had this problem with any other RoadWired bag, I think this was just a one-off problem and unlikely to be an indicator of what other Skooba Seventeen+ bags will be like.
All in all, the Skoboa Seventeen+ is a fantastic bag - it's tough, offers great protection for my gear, and most importantly it's big enough for my huge laptop. I never thought I'd leave my RoadWired MegaMedia bag at home, but the Skooba 17+ has just replaced it. Now all I need is them to create a Skooba Ten+ for my little Fujitsu P7020D laptop!
Jason Dunn owns and operates Thoughts Media Inc., a company dedicated to creating the best in online communities. He enjoys mobile devices, digital media content creation/editing, and pretty much all technology. He lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada with his lovely wife, his sometimes obedient dog, and he really enjoys getting new laptop bags. Perhaps a bit too much...
- Discuss this story [3 replies]
- Permalink
