Bag Whore Loves Crumpler Bags
posted in Hardware, iPods, Macintosh |
Okay, I admit it. I’m a bag whore. I’ve chastised my wife for buying Kate Spade diaper bags, but that’s really the pot calling the kettle black. For a few years, I used and cherished my Tom Bihn backpack with the PowerBook insert. Then I decided I needed something more professional, so I got a leather Kenneth Cole satchel about two years ago.
Now I’m on another binge. The K. Cole is a great, professional looking bag, and the InCase insert is an ideal companion I use to protect my newer MacBook Pro. But it’s not ideal when I’m traveling with lots of gadgets. And it turns out I don’t need anything so professional looking anyway; I’m an Internet consultant, after all. So I went searching for a new bag. And I have a new obsession.
Crumpler makes some of the best bags I’ve ever encountered. I initially bought the Horseman, a large messenger bag with lots of different types of pockets for my gear, room for files and a built-in padded sleeve for the MacBook. The bag is incredibly well designed, and built even better. The materials and quality of construction are outstanding. The Horseman is big, but because it’s soft-sided, isn’t unwieldy when full. Yet it holds a tremendous amount of stuff that stays within easy reach.
I haven’t had it but for a few months, but I recently added a Nikon D50 and accessories to my list of approved gadgets. The camera body and lenses don’t fit as nicely into the Horseman as our Canon SD500, so I was in the market for a new bag that would accommodate the Nikon, my MacBook and other gadgets, particularly for when I’m traveling with my family, or when work requires the extra gear but little in the way of files.
Enter the Crumpler Brazillion Dollar Home. It’s a big, roomy bag with padding all around, and padded inserts that can be mixed-and-matched and attached with Velcro to accommodate your specific needs. According to photos on the Crumpler website, it has room for two camera bodies and lenses, though I have only one camera body. I’ll use the extra space for my iPod, chargers, and other stuff. Best, it has a padded laptop sleeve that can hold a 17″ MacBook Pro and easily handles my 15″ MBP.
At US $265, it’s not cheap. But I’m enamored with Crumpler Bags. Their quality of construction is superb, and they’ve got the best mix of features for my needs. If you’ve already decided that Apple computers are the best of the lot, you’ve paid a premium for your machine, and you have an SLR film or DSLR camera, I’m willing to bet that you’ll see Crumpler as a value as well.
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