I’m Strangely Excited by Laptop Armor

Yesterday I bought a 12″ PowerBook for traveling, speaking engagements and other mobile nonsense.

A brief sidenote: While I’ve been a lifetime PC user, and have only recently delved into the cult of Apple, I do really appreciate how Apple has commodified the laptop. No longer do I have to concern myself with what kind of RAM the thing runs, or the speed of the hard drive, or a hundred ridiculous data points. I just buy a PowerBook. There’s very little choice, and that’s a good thing.

Having purchased the laptop, I went looking for an appropriate bag. Ultimately, I decided to just buy a simple, lightweight sleeve and stick it in my manbag. Before I made that decision, though, I lingered longingly over the coolness that is Laptop Armor.

These are hardbody cases from the good people at Matias. They’re a Canadian company, as it turns out, from Ontario. The cases are amazing…they look like what every villain in every episode of Miami Vice carried his cash or Peruvian marching powder in. You could hide behind one during a shootout and be relatively safe. I particularly liked the white one. When you close it, you feel like you’re putting your PowerBook into a stormtrooper.

However, given the amount of other crap I carry around, they were a little to heavy for my needs. If I didn’t anticipate walking miles inside an airport with that over my shoulder, I might have dropped the 150 bones and bought one on the spot.