Frankly, if I felt like going small and low-key, this Bicycle Field Bag would be perfect. But it only has a small zipper pocket and then the main pouch (by the way, it took me 12 hours to find a picture of the inside). I kind of want more compartments. That said, I kind of dig the high volume of Etsy people who have appliquéd and embroidered and screenprinted the hell out of this boring bag. It would be a great school bag for my kid brother, who may get one of these for his birthday.

The classic Army Map case is 8.5″ x 12″ x 4.5″ which is perfect, if a little boring. Thankfully, there’s Gizmodo to find a wide variety of cases that might just work. Even a quick search on some Army Surplus Stores gets you the basic idea: plain and boring.

I work in corporate America. I will die if I have to have a plain, boring ‘this is a laptop bag’ kind of bag. I have a screaming red bicycle. I have a blue messenger bag (or a smaller pink and black one). I want something more like this herringbone bag. The Unisex iPad / netbook messenger bag looks corp, but it’s very much not. It’s retro chic, something Taffy would use if she had a laptop. And it’s exactly as big as I’d ever want to go with a ‘purse’ type thing.

Of course I saw it and thought ‘It’s not very girly.’ And now some of my friends are laughing at me. Hey, I don’t do skirts, but I am a girl! It’s not my fault most of the non-gag worthy ‘bags’ are murses. Janine King Designs has a whole section on mini-laptop/netbook bags, most of which would work. So does Bewbew designs, though theirs drift back into a bit dull.

Oddly, the CTA has a Retro CTA logo Artist Bag. I think the MTA (New York) does too, but their site won’t work on Firefox or Chrome. They also sell this ‘field bag’ that is all over Etsy and everywhere else. I guess it’s the new ‘bog standard shoulder bag’ for hipsters. The field bag comes in all sorts of colors, which is nice, but they have no compartments, so everything bangs around. On the other hand, there’s the M-51 Engineer’s Field Bag which, except for the side pockets, looks pretty good. But dull.

So do I want massive huge prints? No. Nor do I want a plain, nothing bag. I want something with some pockets, at least a place to shove a cell phone and some pens. It has to hold a magazine, and it cannot be one, boring, dull color. It has to have SOME individuality. If it doesn’t, I’ll be adding on something. It can’t be a briefcase, it can’t look like the normal laptop case.

Finally, after days of poking around, I decided that the M-51 Engineer’s Field Bag was the way to go. But. Instead of getting the plain boring one, I found the CTA’s retro one. It should be here in a week or so. Oh and since the CTA’s full of idiots, you can’t link to their pages correctly. A follow-up is sure to happen.