My wife just got a MacBook Air and she is looking for a way to carry it around. She has a bag that fits it nicely but the bag is not water proof and has no padding. She would like a sleeve of some sort that can help protect it and keep the water out when necessary. There seem to be a lot of those but she would also like to have a detachable strap and none of the sleeves that we can find have one.
Does anyone out there have any recommendations? What do you recommend for a teacher with one of the new Macbook Airs who needs to be able to transport it back and forth?
If your Macbook Air is a 11.6", then I would recommend the STM Jacket Extra Small. It has the unique, permanent handle which is rare for a sleeve. The handle is fixed in position and quite solid, unlike other similar offerings.
It also comes with the extra carrying strap. All the plastic fasteners are on the strap itself and so the sleeve is reasonably light. The fasteners are special snap-on which is very easy to take off but requires a bit force to put in. I guess that is the way which makes it very sturdy to use.
In my case, I seldom use it as I usually put the sleeve in another bag or a hand-carry wheeled luggage. The handle of the sleeve is extremely handy if you want to get the sleeve in and out of another bag or luggage quickly.
It even comes with 3 storage areas -- the back pocket, the front tilted slip pocket (which I find it not very useful as it is designed to hold a small ipod or a bare iPhone, mostly when carrying the sleeve with the strap) and a main zipper pocket which is surprisingly huge. It is slightly larger than the orange stitches in the centre. I put my Apple sync cable, a small SD memory reader there.. anything thin enough is fine.
The padding -- it is quite thick and the presence of the front zipper pocket also helps further. The padding feels like high-density foam. But the weak point is around the perimeter of the sleeve.
The outer material is fine and sturdy nylon which may help keeping the water (and the dust ) out a bit (but I am not sure 100% it is water-proof).
See the pictures.. note the loops at the back of the sleeve for the carrying strap.
They have two color coordinations and it is one of them.
One thing to note is make sure you get the latest batch or ask the retailer. Check the dimensions of the bag on the retailer web site and the STM web site. The newer one has a better fit as it is slightly larger.
