While I love my Timbuk2 laptop briefcase, it does have one problem: putting the laptop in the middle of the bag, while making the bag stable standing, means there is very little room on either side for stuff. It’s fine for going to work (although lunch in a tupperware container barely fits) but it wasn’t going to cut it for school, where I’ll be lugging around laptop, books, lunch, gym clothes and more. And I absolutely did not want a backpack, which is a bit too undergraduate for me and really doesn’t go on well over a sportcoat.

So I stopped by Bushtukah today and noticed that their medium-size Timbuk2 messenger bags were mislabeled as large, and that made the price reasonable, so I now have a medium laptop messenger which looks like this:

That, plus my strap pad from my laptop briefcase, makes for a very roomy, comfy bag. 24 litres! I thought about getting a plain messenger bag and a separate laptop sleeve, but figured I wouldn’t use the sleeve alone much, and a sleeve was $50ish while a laptop messenger was only something like $10 more than a standard.

I figure it straddles the line nicely between “student” and “consultant”.