Review: Brenthaven's Broadmore Backpack Optimized for Travel

The Brenthaven company was first introduced to me by the online Apple Store back in October 2001. I purchased my first Apple notebook, the Powerbook G4 667MHz Gigabit and chose a messenger style case. Brenthaven offered a special foam sleeve which perfectly cradled my prized titanium possession. Brenthaven knocked it out of the park providing plenty of other pockets that would fit my college notebooks and other accessories. Thirteen years later, you wouldn't be able to tell it's age.¹ It stayed with me when I upgraded to the MacBook Pro and also snuggled my wife's MacBook Air comfortably. But, back to why we're here; the TSA Friendly and amazingly spacious Broadmore Backpack.

If you don't already know, my career as an airline pilot requires me to travel quite a bit. In and out of various hotels, hotel shuttles, airplanes and airports, durability is of the utmost importance. TSA friendly bags offer a welcomed bonus but that never proved to be a deciding factor. Since I upgraded to Captain, I've found that sitting on reserve in base for days at a local hotel can be quite mundane. This made it urgent that my next bag needed not only fit my laptop but accommodate a Sony Playstation 3 which I know would provide me hours of entertainment.

I received a Brenthaven Broadmore BackPack last week to review for elijahnicolas.com and it has easily become my primary bag. Packed to the brim, it's proving every bit a worthy successor to my original Brenthaven Messenger. I was impressed by the generous padding not only on the back but on the shoulder straps which are also spliced with Napa leather. The zippers are high quality and the two soft lined pockets serve for quick storage or immediate access to your iPhone / Android and sunglasses. There are also two side pockets that can easily hold a water bottle or tumbler or whatever else you'd like.

One of the defining qualities of Brenthaven's Broadmore line is the "quilted and fully padded CORE™ Protection laptop compartment."

A Protection System that wraps your laptop in high-density protective foam. Flexible bow shaped forms at either end of the laptop compartment automatically adjust to allow a snug fit for any size laptop. Patent ID #7,549,535.

I was under the impression that I would end up using a companion sleeve for my laptop but I'm surprisingly comfortable sliding my MacBook Air 13" or MacBook Pro Retina Display 15" naked into the pocket. It hugs the laptop like a glove and so far, after a couple of unintended drops, the backpack has done it's job well. And yes, even my PS3 has survived.

I mentioned that I planned on carrying my laptop and Playstation 3 but I was able to pack in even more goodies into the Broadmore Backpack. Unknown to me prior to receiving the bag, it included an awesome iPad compartment in the inner pocket. A keyring and serial number can be found inside the outer most pocket and holds just about everything else with slots for pens, pencils, USB drives and wires a plenty. You could even throw in a few Field Notes notebooks too. Don't forget the zippered pockets within the backpack than will also keep those loose trinkets from getting lost in the bottom.

Overall, I'm very happy with the bag. It holds exactly what I need and more. It's stylish, well-built and I can see it being my last.

From left to right: Contigo Autoseal Stainless Steel Travel Mug 20oz, Sony Playstation 3, MacBook Air 13", PS3 power cable, HDMI cable, Thunderbolt to HDMI cable, Sony Playstation Wireless Headset, MacBook Air Powercord, Google Nexus 7" (2012), Hidden Radio Generation 1, PS3 Controller, followed by wallet, watch, keys, bracelet and my iPhone which I used to take this photo. An impressive feat and it even fit underneath my seat on an American Airlines MD80! I like the travel somewhat light. This bag weighs 3.1 pounds while measuring 14.5" W x 18" H x 6.5" D.

This beautiful bag is available from Brenthaven at $249 and comes with a 100% Lifetime Guarantee! If you find yourself traveling as much as I do or appreciate great craftsmanship and attention to detail, make this backpack your last.

Fits: MB Air 13.3", MB Pro 13.3", 14", MB Pro 15.4"

this post was written while listening to Noon Pacific.

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1. I have since lost the actual Brenthaven messenger strap when the bag was checked on as a valet bag on a flight years ago. ↩

Grand Turismo 6 for $39.99 for 1 Week Only!

If you're into racing games, the quintessential and ultimate racing game for Sony's Playstation 3 is on sale for $39.99! What makes this deal so special is that it also includes $1 million in in-game racing credits allowing you customize your car to your wildest dreams! That's $20 off the current going price plus $1M credit for the finest racing game ever made. Taking full advantage of the PS3's power and ability, this game came close to looking better or at least just as good as some of the next generation console titles. Buy it now at your favorite retailer or use my link below to help support this site via Amazon. You can get a code to download it right away via the Playstation Store or receive the physical disc, but whatever you do, you have one week! See you on the track!

via Playstation.com

T-Mobile Unleashed Is NOT So Cheap

At this time, my Early Termination Fees (ETFs) with AT&T are $155 for a line thats due in September of this year. Thats a prorated amount down from $350 in case you're wondering. Let me back up. If you've been following me on twitter, I've been fed up with AT&T's false advertising that sold me a few years ago for a service that CLEARLY said "Unlimited Data" for $30. I use FaceTime quite a bit,¹ stream my baby monitor from hundreds of miles away, and sometimes just soak up youtube so yea, I'll easily go over 5GBs a month and trust me, hotel WiFi is horrific! I hate that they expect me to use it in place of a service that I pay for! So back to the story.

If I sell my Apple iPhone 5 64GB White to T-Mobile for $300 and they pay my ETF at $155, that's "$455" in my pocket. The only way they will "Unleash" you is if you trade in your phone, no exceptions. Then I have to buy a FULL priced mobile phone, desirably an iPhone 5s 64GB, for $799. That means, I still have to shell out $344 so that's not that bad of a deal right? That's actually incorrect. Let me explain. I'd be shelling out $499 for my new phone after the trade-in credit followed by a Mastercard Gift Card in the credit amount of $155 in approximately 8 weeks. So I'm out half a grand to "unleash."

If I can wait, and probably will, for just six more months, I can unlock my iPhone 5, sell it on the market for maybe $400 or more, then buy a full priced iPhone 6. So yes, I'm still out $399 but, here's where I could save. I could then bring it along with me to T-Mobile, and pay nothing leaving me with just the $70 Unlimited 4G Everything Plan plus a $10 SIM kit. When it comes down to it, I'll be out money obviously later in the year with me upgrading my phone but ideally, I'd rather T-Mobile just pay my ETF now and I bring my current iPhone 5 with me. That's what the deal should have been in the first place.

disclaimer: I signed a 2 year contract with AT&T for a subsidized iPhone 5 so ultimately, with the "Unleash" deal, you still end up paying full price for the device. I could save a bunch of money and purchase Google's Nexus 5 for $349 unlocked online instead but that's a whole other story of iOS vs. Android, etc. I'm not going to go there just yet.

And yes, it's pretty awesome that with the unlimited 4G Data you get an additional 2.5GB of tethering capability.

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1. I use FaceTime about 1-5 minutes almost every couple of hours for a total of 30-60 minutes a day. Sometimes, I'm on for 20 minutes in a row. ↩

Carpet Cleaning? Use SoCal Steam Clean

SoCal Steam Clean San Diego rocks! One of the best services that I found on Yelp! not to mention, friendly, organized, meticulous, and detail oriented. Check out my full Yelp! review.

Justin has some of the best top-notch equipment in the business. The chemicals that he uses are perfect; environmentally friendly and non-toxic. He mentioned all this to reassure me and my 18th month old that I have crawling all around that it'd be a-okay. I moved a lot of the furniture and trinkets on the floors prior to him coming over and he did the rest. I can't keep mentioning that he was well-organized. He called me the morning of to confirm the appointment and was even a few minutes early to the house.

Giveaways, Instagram and OOTD #1

I don't usually win anything when I enter various online giveaways but maybe that's about to change! Last night, I threw my name in the hat because I thought, there's really nothing to lose and low and behold, I won! Easy as regram'ming @cityofgentlemen's post showing off the Microtouch Classic ONE Razor and following him (which I have been now for a while), I was notified early last night that I won. The reviews of the Microtouch are mixed on Amazon and it's the one that you see being marketed by Pawn Stars' Rick Harrison.

I'll post a review with my first experience with using a double edge safety razor here as soon as I get the chance to shave with it! Good thing I have my full Art of Shaving Kit to lather me up.

Since our correspondence last night, I told @cityofgentlemen that I've been wanting to post some pictures from time to time of my "looks" / OOTD but I've been hesitating since I'm not that relevant in my opinion. He said just do it so here's the first:

shirt: Gustin Blue-Hunter Gingham
glasses: Warby Parker Roosevelt Striped Chestnut
belt: Gustin Classic Belt
jeans: Gustin Heavy American
shoes: Allen Edmonds McAllister Wingtip Oxfords

and my staples of my Citizen Eco Drive Blue Angels and Tiffany Atlas Bracelt. If you like any of my Gustin clothing and are into raw denim, please use my referral link and get $5 off too!

Minimally Minimal Goes with the iPad Air

Andrew Kim on the iPad Air.

Honestly, for most people, the biggest debate with tablets right now isn’t if you should get an iPad or a competing product. The debate is if you should get the iPad mini with Retina display or the iPad Air. You could argue that the iPad mini now offers the same functionality for a lower price in a more condensed package. However, I would argue that the iPad Air offers the benefits of a larger display without the weight/size disadvantages it once had.

photo by Andrew Kim

I'm receiving my iPad mini with Retina Display in a week or two and will post insights then. Only until I've come to grasp the productivity and consumption aspects within my daily life as a pilot will you see my post. Stay tuned.

Greg Laswell for Under 10,000 feet

Since all the hoopla with the ability to now listen, play, and read your iPad, iPhone, Kindle or any other portable electronic device, I've been turning my ear to musician and artist Greg Laswell. Just last night, a friend of mine upped his stock and recommended that I buy ALL his albums. I figured that I'd do the same and pass it along, with this post. We'll call this the beginning of Thursday Tunes. Download Three Flights from Alto Nido to start. You might have heard of him already as his most popular track, Comes and Goes (In Waves), and a few others have been featured in various television shows. A rather popular track "Off I Go" from Take a Bow, will hit all you Grey's Anatomy fans as the theme for when George O'Malley leaves at the end of season 5. tear

The music is perfect and so soo good but while we're at it, it's also about supporting a native San Diegan!

Microsoft's 2nd Try with the Surface Pro 2

As much as I wanted to like Microsoft's latest Surface Pro 2, the price doesn't justify it's target utility. At $999 for the 128GB model, Apple's MacBook Air is the better laptop and the cheaper iPads or even Android tablets are the better tablet especially when it comes to using many of the apps we are already familiar with. I'm glad to see the upgrade and refinement but I'll be waiting for its next iteration. Until then.

Until then, the Surface Pro 2 is a great machine if you can deal with some of the compromises. If you can't, there are plenty of great tablets, and plenty of great laptops.

via The Verge

Great Sleuthing by Ars Tehcnica on the Artificial Note 3 Benchmarks

Once again, Samsung inflates their numbers by artificial boosting their devices and going so far to as trick the applications running the tests to max itself out. Caught in the act again.

Above is a picture of Geekbench and of Stealthbench, which is identical to Geekbench in every way except for a different package name. With Geekbench, System Monitor shows the CPU is locked into 2.3 GHz mode and all cores are active, but in Stealthbench, the CPU is allowed to idle, shut off cores, and switch power modes, the same way it does in any other app. We have successfully disabled the special benchmark mode.

"Geekbench" is a popular benchmarking app, so the Note is programmed to give it special treatment. It has never heard of "Stealthbench," though, so despite being the exact same app, it does not get the special benchmark boost. The Note will run this benchmark like 99.99999 percent of the other apps on the device. The next step then, is to run the two benchmarks and compare the CPU's benchmark mode with non-benchmark mode.

The file we ended up with is called "DVFSHelper.java," and it contains a hard-coded list of every package that is affected by the special CPU boosting mode. According to this file, the function is used exclusively for benchmarks, and it seems to cover all the popular ones. There's Geekbench, Quadrant, Antutu, Linpack, GFXBench, and even some of Samsung's own benchmarks. The two functions applied to this list seem to be "PACKAGES_FOR_BOOST_ALL_ADJUSTMENT," which is no doubt the CPU booster, and "PACKAGES_FOR_LCD_FRAME_RATE_ADJUSTMENT," which makes it sound like the phone is also altering the display frame rate.

via Ars Technica

Samsung's Galaxy Gear

Save $300 dollars and read the review.

As it stands today, though — unintuitive, oversized, overpriced, and in constant need of a Galaxy guardian — the Galaxy Gear might have been better off staying on the drawing board.

via The Verge

Why Rent a Router?

Okay, there are a couple of reasons and excuses that people come up with renting a router from a cable company, but after a year, you'd be paying for a reasonably great router that you could have owned.  You might be able to return it whenever it goes bad but that's a rarity.  In fact, I still have one of the original 802.11b routers from 2000 that I used alongside my Ti PowerBook G4 Gigabit Ethernet. So back to the topic at hand.  Once again, I'd have to recommend Apple's Airport Express for those that want something easy and sweet.  The setup is a dream, the wireless printing options and AirPlay option make it an easy go to for those invest within the Apple ecosystem.  If you feel like stepping it up a bit more for Time Capsule / backup capability, the Airport Extreme is another good best.  Just my two cents.

If you're the type to nerd out, install DD-WRT or other choice firmwares and tweak the router out to its max performance, the world is your oyster.  The Wirecutter recommends the ASUS RT-66u but it currently on a hold due to the onslaught of 802.11ac routers flooding the market.  The price will eventually come down too so hold up a bit if you're looking to pull the trigger.

I ended up Kickstarting one bad ass router and can't wait to get my hands on it.  It's called the Almond+ 802.11ac by Securifi who also hold the #1 spot on Amazon for their Almond.

The Whole Package

Impressive.

Its hardware and software make it the best smartphone on the market.

via WSJ: All Things Digital

The iPhone 5S is, in some measures, computationally superior to the top-of-the-line MacBook Pro from just five years ago. In your fucking pocket.

via John Gruber's Daring Fireball

Anand on Apple's iPhone 5s

Just my two cents, don't buy the iPhone 5c.

As much as it pains me to use the word futureproof, if you are one of those people who likes to hold onto their device for a while - the 5s is as good a starting point as any.

via Anandtech

And then via Twitter:

I just spent the past week doing the best I can to understand Apple's A7 SoC. In short? It's insanely fast. http://t.co/AgWzGv1ljr