I have been announcing a few unsurprising things recently. I'm about to drop another not-surprise - I'm as geeky about my packs as I am with what they carry. I have been in a constant struggle to find the perfect backpack for my tech needs. It needed to have enough pockets to be organized, enough padding to protect the contents, enough space to haul everything, and enough style to keep me fly! That criteria has been impossible to satisfy. Here's a list of what I wanted to carry with me:

You can see how finding the right pack to fit that list, plus other things I may run into along the way, might be challenging. I was able to find bags that worked with the computing items pretty well, though every bag I had felt like overkill or a purse. For the camera stuff, I couldn't find anything that I was happy with. Micro four thirds is a great camera system and no one makes a bag to match its size. This left me with two bags I had to tote with me if I thought I would need a camera and computer, neither of which I was too fond of.

I hadn't heard of the brand Cocoon before. I actually found them looking for bag organizers because I had enough packs and had given up on finding the perfect one. If you haven't seen this company, familiarize yourself with who they are. What Cocoon offers is a creative weave of gripping elastic straps inside your bag. When I stumbled onto their website, I found the inserts to make my bag more organized, but I also found they make bags with their organizers built in! Needless to say, I was drooling. It looked like I had found exactly what I was looking for.

I took about an hour on the website going over the specs of each bag. I think there was extra pressure because I felt if I did this right I was finally going to have the perfect bag. After laboring over the choices, I decided to go with the SLIM Backpack for laptops up to 15.6". I placed my order and fell asleep quicker knowing happiness was on the horizon.

Holy buckets - it's here! Did I make a terrible mistake? Will it be everything I've built it up to be? I guess we'll find out.

The first thing I noticed: it looks like a backpack. That's a good thing; subtlety is ideal. The next thing I noticed was how well it was put together. In my search I've bought Timbuk2 bags, but I've also purchased cheap bags because they have a pile of pockets and that's what I want. This is much more of a high-end offering than you'll find casually browsing Target or an office supply store. I was also happy to see it has waterproof zippers. I don't spend much time in the rain, but when I do, it's never the time I've decided to bring an umbrella. Between the zippers and the waterproof fabric, I feel my gear is protected from the elements.

Another thing - this backpack is THIN. Really, extremely thin. The 15" laptops I brought to college would fill this sucker up (though, by today's weight standards and thickness, that was more of a desktop than a laptop - we're talking inches thick and weight in pounds over 5). Honestly, it made me nervous. Nothing I have to go into the bag is extremely thick, but when stacked, I wasn't sure how it was going to work. I left the tag on, just in case.

Finally, I had to stick my fingers in the mesh. It was awesome! Sure, I'm 12-years-old, and I bet you'll do the same thing.

Now we get to the fun part of the backpack: the utility! I did notice how soft the inner material is for your tablet and laptop (the small Asus laptop fit in the tablet sleeve pretty well, in case that's a question you had). I also appreciated that the bag had a flap on the side of the pouch opposite of the back. For whatever reason, that separation is appealing to me. This got me excited so I gathered my things and got ready to go. Taking everything I wanted to fit into this bag and setting it next to it (the laptop, tablet, and tripod are not pictured) was a bit overwhelming. I couldn't fathom it working as well as I had initially hoped when I ordered this bag.

But the show must go on! I started with the exciting stuff. The elastic bands have rubber ridges and as I slid things like my camera, lenses, and slick battery pack into the grid, I became more and more confident that things weren't going to come loose and fall to the bottom of the pack. In fact, I think this bag works best at its fullest. The more items you have, the less they will jostle and the better it will hold things in place. That being said, I don't think I could have added much more to the top of the bag. As I zipped it up, it was pretty clear that there isn't more room for gear in that pocket.

I moved to the back main pouch to put my computer and tablet there, along with the tripod and an HDMI cable and I was greeted with a benefit of having the Grid-It® system built into the bag. Even though all my gear in the front of the bag is lumpy and has all sorts of things poking into the next compartment, the system requires a rigid surface behind the grid to work, so when I slid my laptop into the sleeve against the front of the pouch it was like there was nothing in the pouch in front of it. It comforts me a bit to know that my laptop will have pressure dispersed if something presses against the front of the bag instead of having a single point of force against it. The tablet worked as well as a tablet does. The small tripod and HDMI cable were not a problem at all.

And all of a sudden I had a table with only a full backpack on it. I was pretty dumbfounded. It worked exactly how I had dreamed!

After using it for a while, the only major let down of this bag is that the straps feel like they are not up to par with the rest of the pouch. When you put them on, the foam is a little thin and flimsy, and it shifts around inside it's area. There's also no chest strap (as much as you made fun of that guy in high school, it really does help if you're walking or on a bike). I feel they are connected well to the pack. It's not that I'm worried they'll come off, just that they could be a whole lot better, especially considering the quality of the rest of the pack.

In case it wasn't obvious by the title of this post, I love this backpack. It's slim, light, holds all my gear, and most importantly, does so in a secure and organized fashion. If you want to do something like this but have anything larger than a pretty recent 15.6" laptop or have a full sized camera system, I'd look at other bags (by Cocoon still, of course). I ordered this bag on a whim - I didn't read any reviews or research Cocoon or their elastic system at all. The elastic weave made sense enough that I was willing to try it. I'm beyond pleasantly surprised with how effective the Grid-It® system that Cocoon offers is. It's not a huge backpack by any means, and you definitely should consider that if you're in the market, but because of the system in front, I was able to fit a surprising amount of gear into the bag. And it's not terribly expensive. It easily rings in under the Timbuk2 and North Face bags I have.

If you're in the market for a bag to organize and carry your gear, I highly recommend checking these bags out!

I am going to start this post by saying that I have always enjoyed Windows 8.  I had the consumer preview almost as soon as it came out and installed the full version onto my desktop the day it was released.  I think it's a great, lightweight operating system that works well with almost all hardware.  People who complain about Windows 8 are either very advanced users, are people giving an initial, knee-jerk reaction, or have been too lazy to understand that the UI can be, for the most part, completely ignored.

Anyway, I enjoyed Windows 8 so much I thought I would get a Windows 8 RT mobile device.  How much different could it be?  Well, it turns out it's a lot different.  I purchased a Asus VivoTab RT.  I love the Android Transformer line and thought that this machine would be a worthy upgrade.  Unfortunately, the product was not at all what I needed.  Being stuck with laggy internals and a version of Windows which was crippled and pretty useless, I quickly grew tired of the (expensive) machine and got a Chromebook n Craigslist. 

Jump forward with me about 6 months.  Microsoft just announced Windows 8.1 and the new Surface tablets with upgraded internals.  Intel has also introduced the Bay Trail processors - the upgraded Intel Atom line promising incredible battery life, improved performance and at a bargain price.

At this point, two things caught my eye: the first, a contest, and the second, the new line of Dell tablets.  Surface was having a twitter contest to win a new Surface 2, which I entered.  At the end of October, I received a notification that I may be a winner of Surface's Twitter contest.  At about that same time, the Dell Venue Pro 8 went on sale and I purchased one (after selling my Chromebook for no loss!).  At the beginning of November, due to the vague message from Surface, I knew that I was going to have a Dell Venue 8 Pro.

Just last week I got the notification that my Dell was in stock and shipping to me later in the week.  I also was notified that the Surface was actually shipping to me and I ended up getting both on Monday of this week.  After a full day of updates on both, I have started really using these machines.  I have to admit, I really like both devices.

The Surface - I will start with the one that blows me away the least.  I really didn't like Windows RT a year ago.  It was slow and limited.  The Asus had a great keyboard, but that was really the only thing it had going for it.  The new Microsoft Surface 2 changes almost everything I didn't like about the Asus and Windows 8 RT.

First thing I noticed is the speed.  This tablet is night and day when compared to the first gen RT devices.  It's much faster. Websites take much less time to load and I can actually use Word and Excel without exploding with rage over a choppy experience (it was so bad that I had to just assume I was correct and that the tab would catch up eventually).  I also am in love with the inclusion of Outlook.  The old mail app was definitely a mobile-centric mail app.  As something I wanted to use as an email device, I was severely let down.  Now with Outlook, I can compose emails and manage my inbox much better.

I am using the old generation of touch keyboards as my cover.  It's actually not terrible.  I am using it to type this blog post and it's keeping up magnificiently.  It has taken some time to get used to.  The tactile response of just hitting a pad and the layout were really weird and slow at first. I still miss keys more frequently than I would want, but it's much less annoying than typing on the Windows 8 RT, and at the rate I'm improving, I think this will almost completely disappear.

The gripe I have with Windows RT is that every experience that's not Microsoft Office feels crippled.  I understand that Internet Explorer has come leaps and bounds in the last couple of years, but it's still not Google Chrome.  I think the UI and speed of Chrome are far superior to Internet Explorer.  I also can't use Java on the Surface 2, and therefore cannot use it completely for work.  Give me a better internet experience, and I will love this tablet.  I am sometimes limited by the apps available, but that's growing leaps and bounds too. 

Now on to the Dell Venue Pro 8.  Holy cow - let's take a minute to consider this device before I let you know what I think of it.  It's a widescreen 8" tablet that is just under a centimeter thick and weighs in at .87 lb.  It has a quad-core Intel processor with 2GB of RAM and 64GB of hard drive space.  It's running full Windows 8.1 and the battery life is more than 8 hours.  The device retails for $350.  Let that sink in.  To compare, I went to college with a laptop running Windows XP with a single core processor, 100GB of HDD space.  It had 1GB of RAM and the battery lasted less than 2 hours.  This laptop weighed in at 6.2 lbs and the price on that machine was $999... and we're beginning to understand why I'm blown away that this device exists.

The first thing that impressed me about the tablet is that it is running a full, unabridged Windows 8.1 with Microsoft Office Home and Student with the price of $350.  If I wanted to build a machine with those two features, I would have to spend around $200 on just that.  Turning the machine on gave me more surprising results - it's nimble.  The Intel Atom line doesn't hold the device back at all.  The processor has no problem keeping up with the tasks I give it.  Google Chrome runs like a dream, as do my Windows 8 apps and the Office suite.  After running all this for a while, I realized I hadn't charged it.  Here's a feature that's underrated, but to be able to charge my phone and my Windows machine once a day and from the same charger is incredible.  I only take one micro USB cable and wall plug with me and both devices will have battery.  Speaking of battery, you'll be hard pressed to kill this guy in a day of regular use.  It's supremely efficient and it has more than enough juice.

As with every device, there are features I wish it had. I have spent a lot of time considering how I could turn this little guy into a docked desktop.  That's doable, but not necessary, so I'll spare those.  I do, however, wish it included a display out port and perhaps a dedicated USB OTG port as well.  You can plug USB devices into the micro USB port with an adapter, but it would be nice to be able to access that feature while charging.  I also love streaming movies, but not all apps are supported on all devices, so streaming my desktop would allow me to play my movies on a larger screen without messing around with the muddy Miracast standard.

I will note that both have the micro SD card slot to increase storage space if you want.

If you understand the limitations of these two devices and think either meets your needs, I highly recommend both devices.  They are well made machines.  Any reservations about buying a RT or Atom device because of performance issues should be gone.  They are snappy machines that do Windows well.

Bonus: if you are a college student looking for a lightweight and inexpensive laptop, check out the Asus T100. It's using the new Bay Trail Atom processor with the full version of Windows 8.1.  Check it out and see if that device is for you!


Update 1/6/14: I no longer have the Surface tablet.  After getting some time with the Asus T100, it was foolish to keep it around.  I haven't replaced it yet, but I will post an update when I do.