Wombat Mobile

I was perusing my logs last night and it was interesting to see how people stumble upon my blog. It made me want to experiment and see what would happen if I do less navel-gazing here and blog about stuff that might actually be interesting to someone else.

So, in that vein, I thought I'd start posting the notes that I keep when I'm researching buying crap. I often scour forums and review sites for even trivial purchases, and while I often end up with just a collection of links, getting this indexed in the search engines might save someone some time if they're in a similar situation down the road.

We've recently added another laptop to our house, a Dell Inspiron 700m, and we're going to need a new bag/case for it. I just went through this a few months ago, so it's still relatively fresh in my mind. I was torn between getting a backpack or a messenger bag, but I ended up with neither. I wanted something that didn't scream "steal this computer" on the subway, so I went with a Sumdex laptop sleeve from eBay that I could just use with my existing bags.

Here are some sites that I found useful when shopping for a notebook bag/case...

Manufacturers/Designers:

Sumdex - sleeves, not very sleek, but cheap and good padding
Shinza ZeroShock - better looking sleeves, but pricier. might be tough to find in US.
Spire - cool bags that come with a protective sleeve
booq - very slick bags, but pricey
timbuk2 - lots of choices and colors
Brenthaven - functional, conservative, look sturdy
Boblbee - serious hard-shell cases for taking your laptop to the jungle. I'd consider these if I had a nice laptop, but I prefer to buy disposable, sub $1,000 Dells whenever there's a nice coupon code
Manhattan Portage - meh
Ogio

Retailers:

genpi.com - Retailer with nice selection
RoadWired - another retailer with a nice selection
eBags - huge selection

Articles:

Ask Engadget: What’s the best gadget bag? - nice article on Gadget Bags/ManPurses with lots of links in the comments
It's Not A Purse! A Buyer's Guide to Man-Bags - another good article with lots of examples
arstechnica - Perpetual Laptop Bag/Backpack Thread