luo.ma

February 25, 2011

On the recommendation of several people on Twitter, I purchased a bag from SFBags for my new 13” MacBook Air.

(I’ve shown the options I chose in the screenshot above.)

I cannot recommend it highly enough.

As soon as I took the bag out of the box it shipped it, I was immediately impressed with its quality. The MacBook Air fits perfectly, as if it was designed specifically for this computer — because it was!

One thing I really love about the setup is that if I just want a cover for the Air, I can take the shoulder strap and piggyback off and just have that.

~ Get the Piggyback ~

The “piggyback pouch” fits a lot of stuff in it. How much? As I mentioned the other day, I easily fit all of this in mine:

piggyback express

Top row (left to right): MacBook Air AC adapter (without the extension cord part), Field Notes, 3 pens and 1 highliter, 3 USB jump drives including the Storm Trooper that my brother bought me for Christmas.

Second row: a stack of business cards, my iPod touch (OK, it’s just the skin for my iPod touch, since I used the touch to take this picture, but you get the idea), four AA batteries, my keys

Third row: my backup drive, camera, cleaning cloth (shown folded twice), and crappy cell phone.

Plus my clip-on sunglasses and wallet (bottom left and right, respectively).

I can fit all of those in the Piggyback easily. It has two pockets which are the perfect size for an iPhone, iPod touch, or the backup drive (see below for more on the drive). The rest is just open space.

**~ A bag for the MacBook Air and the iPad ~**

One of the things I was looking for was a bag which would fit an iPad as well as the MacBook Air. On the back of the sleeve is a pocket which happens to fit the iPad very well.

The pocket on the back of the sleeve will easily fit an iPad (it will fit “my iPad in a case” if I turn the iPad vertical, but it’s very snug then). It’s a great combination case for both of them.

Given that future iPads will likely only get thinner, this should be a great bag for future iPads owners as well.

Note: as you can see, the top of the pocket is open, so a modicum of care is required, but it also makes it very easy to slip the iPad out when you need it.

~ Backup Drive ~

That backup drive is this one I bought from Amazon specifically because it was small, portable, and bus powered. I’ve only had it for a few days, so we’ll see how it stands up but the size was perfect.

~ The MacBook Air Itself ~

I’ve mentioned this several times on Twitter, but I absolutely love my MacBook Air. I would never go back to using a computer with a regular hard drive again. The biggest test was when the new MacBook Pros came out — and I was not at all disappointed that I had just bought the Air.