The nice folks from Gearzap.com sent me a netbook case to check out. The case is specifically designed for 10.1” netbooks, and is a simple messenger bag which is designed to be worn over the shoulder.
It is smaller than you might be used to if you’ve ever carried a full sized notebook case. It has a pretty simple design with a white stripe offset to the right of the central axis if looking head on. Along the white stripe is a rubber banana logo (which is a bit odd because, well… it’s a banana) which had some leftover rubber around the edges which should have been trimmed better when the patch was cut. Aside from this, all of the stitch work seems rather well done and durable.

The netbook specific aspect of this case makes it really light which is great if you got a netbook with the intention of reducing the weight of your kit. You won’t find the typical shoulder pain from weight being put on one shoulder that you might have experienced if you’ve ever hauled around a monster desktop replacement laptop in a messenger bag! On the other hand, this also makes the bag quite small. If you are a big you might find yourself looking a bit silly with this relatively dainty messenger bag draped over your shoulder. But of course that is personal preference. At least the bag has a nice dark blue hue and metal accents (zipper, clasps, and brackets) that are made to look as though they were finished with chrome. This adds a bit back to the bag in terms of masculine appearance.

The bag is almost more of a square shape than a rectangle, and thus the flap which covers over the main pocket is somewhat long. This makes it sort of strange if you want to access the contents while the bag is actually on your shoulder as you have to go around the flap to get there. Magnetic clasps hold the flap closed. The magnets are reasonably strong, but the clasps are ‘button shaped’ if you will, and since they are on the inside of the flap, you kind of need to feel your way around until the button part finds the receiving hole that is designated for it, though you’ll hear a satisfactory metal click when you get it just right.

The main pocket has your usual padded slot designed to hold the netbook and an elastic strap with velcro to keep the device secured. Since the bag is not very deep (doesn’t go far out from the wearer’s perspective), there isn’t a lot of depth to the main bag, and fiddling with the elastic strap seems like more trouble than it’s worth, especially considering that a zipper already seals the main compartment. The netbook sleeve couldn’t fit the HP Mini 1000 [Portal page] any better. The fit really feels just perfect. There is padding on the front and back of the sleeve. The main pocket also has your standard pen/pencil holder fare, two mesh pockets on the padded separator of the netbook sleeve, and a few other pockets. The main compartment is a perfect size for the netbook’s power adaptor and a few other small items, though if you are planning on using this case for for school, be forewarned, it isn’t large enough to fit standard binders or folders, but you should be able to get plain old paper in there.

There is also a second zipper pocket on the front with no special padding and no holders inside, just in case you want to cram a few more things in there. Also on the back of the case is a final zipper pocket, but this one doesn’t have any depth structured with the fabric, so thin things back here only!

Overall I’d say that as long as the bag fits your taste in terms of style, it’ll work well if you have an appropriately sized netbook. The sleeve fits 10.1” netbooks perfectly, and there is still room in the pocket for the A/C adapter and a number of other curios, as well as the two other zipper pockets.

Thanks again to Gearzap.com. If you are in the market for netbook accessories, they have a pretty extensive collection, have a look! Also if you’d like to see all of the Cool Banana brand cases that Geazap offers, head here.

Vaja hand crafts a lot of really nice looking and premium priced gadget cases among other things. This time they’ve crafted up something wonderful looking for the Vaio P [Portal page][review]. With two different styles to choose from, you can wrap your Vaio P in fine leather and make it even more expensive. There is a full body case (pictured above) and a sleeve (pictured below) that stays on the Vaio P while you use it. There are actually three variations of the full body case. You can customize either of the case styles to your personal color preferences. The sleeve costs $120, and there is one full body case that can be bought for $180 and will ship in 3 business days. All the other styles get customized by you and will take around 20 days to make and run your $200. All of the case options look incredibly beautiful and I should warn you now that if you don’t want to be tempted to drop $200 on a case for your VAIO P, you should not click through to Vaja’s site as their wares might be too appealing to turn down. Don’t feel safe even if you don’t own a VAIO P, they make plenty of other cases as well. Honestly, these cases look magnificent in my opinion.

[jkkmobile] [pocketables.net]

Jenn from Pocketables.net shows us an N800-looking MID out of China that has an interesting portable dock. The dock says “MID Expansion” on it, and seems to be just that. It snuggly fits to the bottom of the device and has a screen cover attached to it than can fold over the screen of the MID to protect it.

The dock has it’s own a battery which means that attaching it to the MID does more than just add an additional headphone jack, ethernet, USB, and VGA out port, but it also functions as an extended battery. It appears as though there is no connector on the bottom of the MID and from the images we can see only a USB cord attaching the dock to the MID. It seems as though the MID can be charged through USB if this is indeed the case. In the images it appears as though both the dock and the MID have SIM card slots which probably means you can use dual SIMs, as the unit is also a phone.

The MID itself is fairly low powered with a 624MHz CPU, 128MB of RAM, and a 4GB SSD. The unit is running what appears to be a Linux distro which has plenty of stolen graphic designs from the iPhone, and it seems like there is a hint of Maemo in there too (the OS that runs on the Nokia Internet Tablets).

As Jenn noted, this solution definitely looks better than having a port replicator dongle sticking out of your handheld device, and the fact that is doubles as a battery and (triples?) as a case for the MID is pretty cool. It is also great that when you attach the dock it still allows you to use the MID in a mobile manner; most docks are designed to stay in one place simply by the nature of the idea of a dock. So what do we call it, a mobile dock? Sounds paradoxical if you ask me.

[tech.163.com] via [Pocketables.net]

“But Ben, my iPhone already has Bluetooth!”, I’m sure you are saying right now. Thanks to Apple, you can barely use it for anything, and support for A2DP audio streaming and AVRCP is definitely not included. Luckily there are ways around this. Take the wiRevo Stereo Bluetooth Adapter for iPod and iPhone, which you can buy today on Woot.com’s Yahoo partner site, sellout.woot.com. For anyone who has managed to avoid hearing what Woot is, it is the most famous deal-per-day site on the interwebs. They offer one item per day with a limited stock, and when it sells out, it is gone for good (translation: if you want one of these, buy quick!).

The wiRevo Stereo Bluetooth Adapter for iPod and iPhone supports A2DP and AVRCP, which roughly means that you’ll be able to listen to good quality stereo music through a pair of Bluetooth headphones. There is also a pass-through for your power adapter which means that you can charge your iPhone/iPod while the adapter is plugged in. It is sad that Apple couldn’t build this functionality directly into the iPhone’s bluetooth stack, but $9.99 isn’t a bad deal if you want to remedy Apple’s flaws, and an even better deal if you have an iPod that doesn’t have Bluetooth to start with. I’m not sure exactly which generations of iPod this works with so I’ll leave that little mystery up to you before purchasing it. Seems like this same accessory is selling for around $39 elsewhere on the internets.