A good case for your laptop

Choosing between the $12 nylon school bag and the
Louis Vuitton. All things in moderation

By Theo Sands

After years of using a PC laptop, I recently switched to a Macintosh PowerBook. The switch in operating systems turned out to be much easier than I thought. The reason is that Windows XP operating system and the Mac OS X interfaces are remarkably similar from the user's point of view. They're so similar in fact that I wouldn't be surprised if the next generation of operating systems for both companies weren't fully compatible. In may be that in the future most software will run equally well on either one. As it was, with a little help from an IT person, the transfer of files from my old PC to my new Mac was entirely seamless. Even my Palm PDA files and e-mail address book handled the transition.

I like my new Mac and am writing this article on it. The similarity in the speed and features to my old PC, though, means that it hasn't been quite the thrill I'd hoped it would be — except for one thing: the design. The PowerBook is slimmer by half with a smooth aluminium skin that's a pleasure to the eye and the touch.

Such beauty, I reasoned, required a new case to house it in. It was not a decision I made lightly. I've always had an aversion to the laptop cases you find in office supply stores. Not only are they generally clunky affairs, they also seem to have "Steal this bag" written all over them. My old case is a bright yellow nylon over-the-shoulder affair that I bought in a discount luggage store for $12. It looks like something a kid who hated homework would use to take the smallest possible number of books back and forth from school. No one would think it contained anything of value. Not only that, I can throw it in the wash with the rest of the laundry.

My first instinct was to get a Mac-approved bag tailored for my new beauty. I began my search on the internet. The crème de la crème yielded by my search was a Pelican high impact copolymer resin case that's both dustproof and waterproof. The deluxe model features a padded lid organizer and shock absorbing tray, lock-down velcro safety strap, removable padded shoulder strap, keyed locking latches, an atmospheric purge valve and o-ring seal. The illustration showed a scuba diver emerging from the surf with the case held high. The price? $144.95 US. One word came to mind: overkill.

At the other end of the scale was a slipcase, little more than a padded envelope with a zipper, neat but not practical.

It didn't even have space for cables. At $27.95 US, I decided to keep looking.

I've always admired Coach products so I had a look at what they had to offer (www.coach.com). Their best laptop case was a sturdy two-compartment top opening black or brown leather case complete with silver buckles. It was heavy and, at $498 US, a tad pricey.

Over the summer I'd visited a Tumi outlet store and had been impressed with the clean line of their products. Tumi.com offered a slim, handsome black leather case with a separate compartment for cords. At $295 US it was more than I wanted to spend but looked like good value for money.

On my way home, just for fun, I popped into the Louis Vuitton store on Peel Street in downtown Montreal. They had a brown computer bag festooned with their logo complete with gold clasps and gold-trimmed zipper. I guess I've seen too many knock-offs, because it looked tacky, even cheap, and at $1,400, clearly it was not.

In the end, I decided to see if the new laptop would fit in a soft natural brown leather shoulder case by Frye I bought a year ago for $165 US. It looked too small but to my delight, the computer literally fit like a glove. A neat zipped pocket holds the cables and there's another pocket for disks. The search was over.