Author: Allison Kral

It’s conference season again. Every year I struggle with the best way to tote my MacBook Pro, DSLR camera and all the acoutrements I haul around as part of my job. No doubt you, too, need to travel with expensive electronics you want to protect from damage or theft.

Determined to find the best solution for my trip in May to the European Navigation Conference (ENC), I researched several options. Instead of the roller bag I’ve been using, (and accidentally rolled over people’s feet — I apologize if I ever bumped you!), I opted for a backpack.

The TLS Mother Lode Weekender travel backpack includes nifty organizational details and a laptop compartment. It has an expansion zipper — nice, because I always come home with more than I leave with, thanks to all the literature and hand-outs at the booths I visit. It looks like a backpack, but opens like a suitcase.

The Kenneth Cole Reaction backpack has a “checkpoint-friendly” laptop compartment — always a handy feature. The middle compartment features an organization panel, and it has an iPad/tablet pocket.

These are both nice choices, but I found a backpack that has a home for my bigger camera as well as my laptop. The Udee backpack, a new product developed through a kickstarter campaign, is designed not just for office folk like me, but field workers. It has 19 features, including a few unusual ones — a portable cooler, an earphone port, pockets for passpports and glasses, and a USB port for charging electronics using a battery stored within the bag (battery not included).

It also has an anti-theft feature (important to me in case I fall asleep on a train).

If you’re attending ENC, look for me — the one with the backpack pictured above.