Well, my old Eagle Creek bag was not only falling apart, but it's just barely big enough for my old 12" PowerBook, so when I ordered my MacBook, I had to go shopping for a new bag.
I like 'as small as possible', while still having real functionality. I'm an on-site computer tech, so I carry stuff with me. Space for a portable hard drive, disks, CDs, notepads, pens, etc are all needed. But I don't want to haul around something so over-large that I end up filling it with stuff I DON'T need.
I finally settled on a bag from
Ellington Leather. It's their
Multi-tasker, from their (surprise) Multi-tasker collection. I got it in the 'olive brown' color showsn at the bottom of that page; and it fits the MacBook perfectly. (The middle picture shows it with a 15" PowerBook in it.)
It has two nice large zippered pockets on the outside. I use one for my CDs, one for my dice (Role-playing game dice, that way I don't have to come home to grab anything.) It has a small magnetic-clasp pocket in front, and another in back, each big enough to hold a few small items. I keep my external hard drive in one, and little accessories like my iPod nano, a USB flash drive, a short USB and a short FireWire cable in the other. The inside has a large mesh zippered pocket (perfect for cables and connectors,) on the front-outside, facing an 'organizer' area with little pen slots, floppy slots, a small zippered pouch, and spaces for other things. Oddly, since it doesn't open 'wide', it has a business card window on the
inside that is all-but-invisible from any reasonable angle. The laptop pouch is well padded, and has an elastic snap-close band to hold it in place.
The
only possible complaint is the lack of a space for papers. Only the laptop pocket, and the 'open space' next to the organizer section are large enough for an 8.5x11, and neither is very good, as your papers will either get squished by your laptop, or get rubbed on by all the stuff in the organizer area. The double-zippered pass-through 'pocket' on the back is big enough, but if you ever plan on using it like shown on their bottom photo, you can't store stuff there. (I put my RPG books there when it's game night.)
I have no affiliation with the company, other than living in the city it's based (just found that out while trying to find their website.) You can probably get their bags from resellers more cheaply than from their own website. (I got it from a local Mac reseller, who was selling it for $65; a decent amount under the manufacturer's suggested $80 price.)
