My employer for my day job provides me with a 17″ screen laptop and has provided a backpack style bag to haul it around in. Unfortunately my first bag shredded itself over the course of a year. The replacement bag I got was holding up better… until our cat had an unfortunate accident near it. Cleaning the bag took care of that. Or rather I thought cleaning it took care of it until the first time I got caught in a bit of rain and I was “treated” to a familiar order returning.
After that I worked harder to keep my work bag dry and put up with the occasional whiffiness. Then the other day, I noticed some money I’d forgotten about in my PayPal account and around the same time I heard ThinkGeek had their Bag of Holding in stock. It was the right size, looked sturdy and was within my budget. So I ordered it and have been using it as my daily bag for a little over a month now. Which brings us to the good, the bad and the ugly.
The Good
- My work laptop fits snuggly in the padded pocket.
- The heavy canvas construction stands up well to brief exposures of heavy rain.
- The bag has really great, front snaps. Rather than being just tacked directly to the outside of the main body of the bag, the snaps are on little strips of the same nylon webbing that makes up the shoulder strap. This is gives you a little more wiggle room to fasten the flap shut after packing stuff into the interior pockets.
- The bag is big enough that I’ll wager I can carry my work laptop and my large 3 ring binder for gaming.
The Bad
- The padded pocket for the laptop isn’t an interior pocket under the main flap of the bag. I would have prefered it to be under the flap, so that it would feel better protected.
The Ugly
- Some of the stitching is coming loose from the seams in a couple of spots. It’s not much (a couple of millimeters of thread) but it is worrisome that it’s happening so soon.
Overall, I give the bag 4.5 stars out of 5 and would rate it as recommend buy.
I have the first gen of the bag of holding – this one seems much snazzier (i’ve been tempted to buy it several times). I’m hard pressed to fit 2 books a drawing pad and a notebook in mine. The notebooks make it hard to zip since they are taller than the bags un-stretched dimensions. 🙁 They obviously have found a larger pocket dimension for this line.
Well next time you’re in the office, feel free to swing by my desk and take a look at this version of the bag. That way you can better decide if it’s worth your money to upgrade.