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Backpacks: Laptop Backpacks
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Mountain Hardwear Paladin Laptop Backpack Mountain Hardwear: Paladin Laptop Backpack
Rugged durability balanced with urban appeal the Mountain Hardwear Paladin Laptop Backpack is made from non-toxic HardWear tarp and will protect your goods and keeps looking good after loads of wear and tear. Coated zippers shed water and a padded computer sleeve protects your 17" laptop. The Paladin keeps you organized with pockets to keep your papers magazines notebooks Ipod and cell phone. Back panel and shoulder straps are fully padded and covered in spacer mesh for comfort and breathability and compression straps allow you to cinch this backpack down when you aren't using it to full capacity.

Pretty well thought out. Image: 3 Stars
by SES
Bad stuff first- it's too small for books. I have a friend with a Guardian (the "smaller" version of this bag I think it's 22 Liters and the Paladin is about 30 Liters) and he has a lot of room for books so you can hit campus for the day and take what you need. I bought the Paladin because I wanted more room for an extra layer and so I could have external access for my laptop. The extra 8 Liters of space in this bag is almost unusable (and I don't know where it is to be honest you can't tell by opening it and looking that the bag is "bigger"). It's long and narrow and lacking depth (which goes to show buy a bag based on a volume measurement- I couldn't find the actual dimensions anywhere just the volume). Which would be fine if it weren't a school bag. I don't think they did anything useful like measuring a text book before they designed this thing. You can fit a lot more "school" stuff in the Guardian. Also the internal side pockets are almost useless because they make it even harder to get text books in as does the accessory pocket on the front of the bag. Some of the interior organizer pockets are also useless (they're too thin for anything of value to fit in them (a single magazine doesn't count)) . However It is a true Mountain Hardwear product once you get past the fact that it's no good at carrying books. It's very well made (tough good seams) and some of the details on the bag (organizer lid water resistant zippers daisy chains water bottle side pockets) are well done. I do like the external access to the laptop and I really like the fact that the bottom of the laptop compartment is suspended off the bottom of the bag quite a ways so that when you set the bag down your computer never hits (I've always looked for this and nobody does it with their computer bags it seems like a no-brainer to me). To sum up it's a well-made product and it'll be tough and it has a few really nice details but they obviously never actually tried to use it as a school bag. The proportions make it completely unusable if you have to carry more than a couple of paperbacks and a binder less than 2" thick.