Crumpler Part and Parcel Courier Bag review

This is my infam­ous bag that has been repor­ted to the local Crumpler store on more than one occa­sion, because I had the auda­city to sten­cil my blog URL on it, to clearly identify as mine.

Three years ago, I bought a Crumpler bag on the recom­mend­a­tion of a couple of friends, to pro­tect my then laptop, an ancient and battered Ti Power­book from my daily adven­tures. I had used at least four other bags, but none had the dur­ab­il­ity, pro­tec­tion or use­ful­ness offered by the Part and Par­cel. The fact it was a full blown cour­ier bag, that I could use while cyc­ling really swung it for me.

Shortly after pur­chas­ing the Part and Par­cel, I was head­ing to Web Dir­ec­tions 06, so to clearly identify my bag from the other crumpler lov­ing geeks at the con­fer­ence. I cre­ated a sten­cil and using a small foam roller and acrylic paint put my blog URL on the top flap. I did not even get to the first work­shop on the first day, without see­ing an identical bag. I sat down to break­fast at a nearby cafe and at the next table was an identical bag sans URL.

Over the three years, I have used the bag with a num­ber of dif­fer­ent laptops, includ­ing the cur­rent Mac­Book Pro. The Part and Par­cel must be doing a good job, because the Mac­Book Pro is far less battered than Ti Power­book was at the same stage of it’s life.

The bag has been used on an almost daily basis to take a laptop to work. Except when I am rid­ing most or all of the way in. I star­ted using the Part and Par­cel to carry clothes (a change of clothes for work, no shoes and cyc­ling clothes for the return trip) and emer­gency tools for my 90 minute plus, 42km com­mute into work. The prob­lem was after an hour or so, I would start los­ing sen­sa­tion in my left shoulder, which had the bag slung over. This is the shoulder that has suffered a couple of major frac­tures and nerve dam­age in the past dozen years, so it should not be the same for you.

I bought an inex­pens­ive back­pack for the long cyc­ling com­mute and con­tinue to use the Part and Par­cel for everything else, includ­ing the reg­u­lar ride to the sta­tion with laptop.

I have used the Part and Par­cel for a lot more than lug­ging a laptop, it has been used to carry a vari­ety of objects vari­ous dis­tances by foot and by bike and it does the job well.

Pros

• Dur­able
• Prac­tical
• Looks good

Cons

• Not that com­fort­able after an hour with mod­er­ate load.
• Too pop­u­lar.
• Brand fan­at­ics

Conclusion

I am very happy with the Part and Par­cel, it is a prac­tical and dur­able cour­ier bag that doubles as a laptop bag. And yes I would recom­mend it to any­body who needs a laptop bag and par­tic­u­larly any­body who cycles.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 10th, 2009 at 11:15 pm and is filed under Just geek, cycling . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.