$5000 of tech in a $40 backpack?

This is an interesting one – you go out and buy a new backpack for about $40. You hope that the backpack is friendly to your postural needs and will protect your worldly goods when traveling thru the streets of Amsterdam or customs in the US. But do you ever stop and think > “My god, I have over $5k worth of equipment in this bag right now and I’m trusting a $40 backpack to protect it all!?”

Most people these days are walking around with a laptop ($2-4k), digital camera ($500-2k), external hard drives ($200), iThings ($500) and other assorted items in their bags, that would leave you gutted should anything happen to them. Makes you wonder how bag designers get the bags so cheap or if the bag you’re actually using is going to protect the goods in it should you run into a wall or drop the bag…

Which leads us to the next question, what do you carry around in your bag? And do you think your bag actually serves its purpose for how your using it?

I’ll go first. I own an Incase Nylon Backpackand have owned it for over a year. It cost me $120, which at the time I was kind of freaking about spending that much coin on a pack.

But it’s pretty much a great bag for anything work or work travel related. There are plenty of little compartments within the bag that allow storage of cables, hard drives, glasses (I’m optically challenged), laptop, etc. Which is pretty much what I carry around in it. The shape, for me anyway, works well against my back until I have hit breaking point and it starts to sag down my back like so many other packs do, but I do think the breaking point of the Incase one is much higher then others on the market.

Being an outdoors type of guy, always looking for surf or going riding on a bike, the Nylon Backpack doesn’t really cut it. It don’t bulge out easily and no wet/dry for the suits tends to leave the bag stinky and wet.

For the $120 spent on the pack, I’m pretty happy with it. But given my recent education in the world of carry I am already eyeing my next pack and what type of features I’d like to see or have in it.

What about you?

Oh and we grabbed the very top image from night Feg Flickr photostream.