Review: be.ez LE rush 13″ laptop bag

I consider myself a loyal user of my stuff. It’s a strange thing to say, I know, especially coming from someone who is so fascinated by the fast-paced, tech world, but there you have it. I bought a Muzetto bag from Waterfield earlier this year, and although I expected to use it daily for a while to come, I may have accidentally stumbled upon its replacement in the form of the be.ez LE rush (which was kindly sent over for review by the Max Borges agency).
The rush is a completely different kind of laptop bag than the Muzetto. It’s smaller, it’s padded, and it’s composed of ballistic nylon instead of leather. I’ve actually always found these kindof bags rather plain and unexciting, but there’s something strangely charming about this one. It’s not an extremely eye-catching design, but it’s pleasant to look at, which is more than I can say for most laptop bags I’ve seen at my local Best Buy.

Comp.artments
The rush is extremely compact, but very roomy. It’s got seven pockets by my count – including the main compartment that houses my 13″ MacBook Pro. I’ve made a quick walk-through video that shows all of the stuff I can JAMM into the bag:

The padding is thick enough on all sides to protect a laptop from everyday jolts, but it’s the comfort level and accessibility that make the rush a real winner in my book.
I don’t carry a ton of gear around alongside the laptop, but even so, my Muzetto did dig into my shoulders after about 30 minutes of walking. The rush has felt a lot more comfortable somehow, and it might have to do with the horizontal storage of the laptop, or the size of the bag. It’s smaller, and I can keep it closer to my body, so walking just feels more natural. I also love how I can easily remove the shoulder straps and use the rush like a nylon briefcase.

Pock.ets

The front pocket is velcro-sealed, so I use it for things like USB sticks, various cables, and my trusty PPCTechs battery. The other side of the bag has a set of three open pockets, the kind you’ll usually see on school bags to carry pens. The two outer slots are a little too small for my uses, but I like to keep my earphone pouch in the middle one. It’s nice and accessible, but it’s also discreet – so it’s hard to tell anything is in there. When I travel on crowded places like the subway, I simply flip the bag around so that the velcro pocket is pressed up against me, and only the three open pockets are exposed.
This was one major gripe I had with the Waterfield bag — it never quite felt “safe” to me, because it didn’t actually have any seal. Nothing ever fell out of my Waterfield Muzetto, but I was always apprehensive that somebody would take something at some point and I’d never be the wiser.
The main laptop compartment is padded, as I mentioned earlier, but it also features three pockets — a split pocket on one side (great for hard drives or USB hubs), and another pocket that spans the width of the bag (used for my MBP charger). When the rush is fully packed, everything feels very snug, but still readily accessible. I appear to have had some trouble taking the earphones out in the video, but that’s because I was holding the camera in the other hand It’s actually very easy to pull things out, regardless of whether you’re at rest or on the go.

Con.clusion
A laptop should be easy to use and carry around, and that’s ultimately what I like so much about the be.ez LE rush. It’s just a simpler set-up than my Muzetto, and it’s refreshing to have something with velcro and zipper-sealed pockets. The rush keeps up with all of the big and little gadgets I pull out of it, and I’m quite happy having it at my side.
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You can pick your own be.ez LE rush up on Amazon.com for about $55 for the 13″, and $60 for the 15″. You can see more information (as well as the two other colour schemes) on be-ez.com

Apple Magic Mouse Impressions

I got to play with a Magic Mouse for about a week before I had to hand it back (to the original reviewer, tee hee), but I’m still not completely sure if I want to pick one up for myself. I love the flat design, the intuitive (if meager) multi-touch, and the Bluetooth responsiveness…but at the end of the day, I’m still too scared that Apple will never really capitalize on this cool piece of tech.

Comfort
I was actually almost daring the mouse to give me some sort of hand ache. The thing lies so flat against the desk and is so small that you actually palm it instead of grip it. However, in my week of use, about 5-8 hours a day, the Magic Mouse was nothing but spectacularly comfortable.
I have medium-sized hands, and they’re used to holding a Logitech G9 gaming mouse at my desktop, but the Magic Mouse only took a day or so to get used to. Clicking is satisfying and easy, and I actually like the way you right click (lift your index finger up, and click along the right side with your middle finger). Strangely enough, it reminds me of the way cats do their business, but that’s another story altogether.

Hardware
The Magic Mouse really feels like a premium accessory. The build doesn’t feel cheap, and as I mentioned earlier, it’s satisfying to *click*. At least 75% of the top surface is touch-sensitive, and the entire front half of the mouse is one giant button. Along the bottom you’ll find the battery hatch (stick ye the AA batteries in here), power switch, and the laser tracking eye.
The whole mouse slides along two plastic rails that are fine on a mouse pad, but just a little too rough on my sorta-wood IKEA desk. I’d have preferred if the rails were made of rubber or silicone or whatever is stuck onto the bottom of my Logitech G9.

Software
Here’s where the Magic Mouse gets a little disappointing (but a little less so with a bit of modding). First of all, the default sensitivity on the mouse is absolutely horrific. It positively crawls across my 13″ MacBook screen, and I had to download a free utility called MouseZoom to get any work done.
Left clicking is done on almost any portion of the mouse, except for the right-most side. A single finger click on the right side is a right click. One finger swipes activate momentum scrolling and two finger swipes to the left and right function as back and forward, respectively.
There is no middle click, no gesture to trigger Expose — just the features I’ve listed above. The iPhone has had a multi-touch screen for about three years now, and Apple still hasn’t taken full advantage of the technology with the default applications, and I’m worried that buying a Magic Mouse right now might very well lock me into a cool, but essentially featureless little accessory for a while to come. There are some cool little 3rd party utilities on the horizon, but I’m wary of cluttering my Mac workspace up with even more processes. I wanted a nice, simple set-up, and trying to juice the Magic Mouse for everything it’s worth might well make things more complicated.

It’s the features you leave out?
I’ve read just a little bit on the subject of Apple design, and it seems to me that they’re just as conservative as they are revolutionary. I love the iPhone interface and I love how it changed the smartphone landscape, but what kind of stupid smartphone doesn’t let you change wallpapers, edit the auto-suggestion dictionary, or create shortcuts to toggle the wireless radios?
One big reason I’m scared of the Magic Mouse is that Apple might have a ridiculously plain vision of the technology: “here, public, take a mouse with all of two multi-touch gestures and get used to the idea for a few years…then maybe we’ll talk.”
The thing is, I believe I’m ready right now for some extra features and smarter customization, but it just isn’t being offered.
I haven’t called this a review because I’m still not really sure about what I think of the Magic Mouse, despite having thought about the purchase for a good three weeks now. At the end of the day, I still think the Magic Mouse is an amazing design accomplishment, but it’s really all up to Apple to provide the back-end support to make it a practical accessory that is worth $70. As it stands right now, buying a Magic Mouse feels more like an investment in multi-touch technology rather than an actual accessory purchase.

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The Magic Mouse is available at your local Apple Store or Best Buy for around 70 dollars.

Review: iSkin ProTouch Classic and FX for MacBooks

What I like about the ProTouch silicone keyboard cover is how it has changed my MacBook habits: with a cover over my keyboard at all times I no longer have to worry about dirt collecting on the top or whether the cookie crumbs will slowly infiltrate and ultimately take over the underside of certain keys, adding an undue amount of *crunch* to every single letter I type.

More Care-Free Computing…
The ProTouch lifted a weight from my shoulders and I feel a lot more free around my computer, and it’s been great for snacking and surfing. I’m now free to biscuit away while I review, and review while I biscuit.
What’s great is that the ProTouch covers your keys from food and finger oil, but feels almost exactly the same when you type. Pressing on keys doesn’t present quite the same sensation because you can feel the silicone border around keys – but this is something I got used to within a day.  Typing is actually a little quieter, since the silicone tends to hold the plastic keys in place so they don’t rattle as much while you type.

Classic vs FX…
I was sent the Classic and FX skin in Black/White for review, and although they’re priced at different levels, there isn’t a big difference between the two: both of them feature the same fit and protect the keyboard from crumbs and minor spills.
The major differences are cosmetic: colour and a small spot on the keyboard. The Classic features a transparent look and an embossed iSkin logo along the right side of the keyboard, whereas the FX is a solid white with black keys and a smooth spacebar. The keyboard logo on the Classic is a very minor detail, but since typing is such a particular thing it’s probably still worth nothing. I don’t really notice it because I press on the keyboard with my left thumb, but it is strange that they’d switch the logo location on the “low end” ProTouch model and keep the logo above the arrow keys on the FX.
Another little advantage that the FX skin has is how it affects the keyboard backlight. By default, the backlight on the MacBook keys tends to glow a little too harshly for my tastes — almost as if Apple just stuck little light lights behind the keys and called it a day (is the light in the back? Presto, backlight!). It’s a far cry from the smooth, pulsing sleep light along the front of the machine. The ProTouch FX fixes that a little bit by dulling the illumination and making it look a little more uniform. The backlight looks softer and more subtle under the FX, and it’s a welcome change.

After a month of usage…
I wasn’t sure about this product when I first received it, but it’s probably become my favourite iSkin offering by far. I use my MacBook Pro daily for surfing and writing and both skins have held up quite nicely, although the spacebar cover on my TouchPro FX is a little wrinkled since I used it more often. I believe a month is a decent amount of time to test the ProTouch, and it’s proven to be a very solid and useful accessory.

Conclusion
The ProTouches are about as close to a necessary accessory for my uses as I can think of — I’m not a very messy computer user and I’m usually really careful around the sensitive parts of the machine. What the ProTouch does for me is ease a lot of those concerns about crumbs, finger oil, and dirt mucking up my keyboard and just let me enjoy using the thing. This luxury doesn’t come cheap, but judging from the durability and quality of the product in this last month of usage, I believe the iSkin ProTouch Classic is priced just right at $25. The ProTouch FX is priced at $5 more and really only adds colour and a bit of backlight dulling, so if you’re just looking for simple, subtle keyboard protection, stick to the ProTouch Classic and type away.

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You can pick up your own iSkin ProTouch Classix or FX for $25-30 on iSkin.com.

Review: USBFever’s 360 Swivel Stand for iPhone and Blackberry (looks a lot like an Xtand)

The USBFever 360 Swivel Stand looks a surprising amount like a product I reviewed earlier, the Just Mobile Xtand. Both of them can hold iPhones, but the USBFever version goes a step further by providing support for the BB Bold and Storm. However, since I don’t normally have access to Blackberries (I just borrow them from the folks), this review will focus on how well the iPhone fit and how the Swivel stand compares to the Xtand.

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The XP1 Power Pack: a 2-in-1 iPhone cable and battery pack

Is that the XP1 Power Pack, or are you just happy to see me? Alright, so I’m really not sure why the first image on the XP1 is of two women who aren’t even using any electronics, but this is what the power pack actually looks like:

I’m hoping to get my grubby hands on a cable for testing later on, but here are the details for now. The power pack is essentially an iPhone cable with a backup battery added somewhere in between the two plugs. The battery claims to hold 2500 mAh and charges via USB. I think it could be a seriously cool product, depending on how it weighs and how big the battery pack portion really is. Many other portable charging solutions keep the cables and the batteries separate, so the XP1 could reduce the clutter in your accessory bag if it turns out to be awesome. I still don’t know what those women are smiling about, though.