Pakuma Akura K1 laptop bag review

With my 7 year old Crumpler bag hanging together by threads I figured that my trip to the US would be a good time to evaluate one of our new bag suppliers, Pakuma. After looking into what was available to meet my needs I settled on the Pakuma Akura K1, a backpack suitable for laptops upto 17".

On receipt of the bag I was surprised to find it was extremely similar to the Crumpler bags (in fact you'd be forgiven, by me at least, for thinking the logo was Crumpler's own), but remarkably lighter. The laptop protection is excellent, and because the material the exterior bag is made of is thinner (which might mean it doesn't last the 7 years the Crumpler bag did) and lighter I felt there was more space for storage in the main part of the bag despite the entire volume being smaller. There's a couple of nice touches as well, with a headphone port in the top of the bag so you can keep your MP3 player in the bag whilst using it, and (essential for travellers) two mesh pockets for bottles. In terms of comfort I found this bag much better than my previous bag (although the shedding of 7 years worth of clutter may have helped this) and I will be sticking with it for the forseeable future; I will of course report back should there be anything to add.

Now I realise that this bag might not be as heavy duty as its (twice as expensive by the way) Crumpler equivalent, but for daily use in normal commuter situations I think its excellent value at around £45.

Get your Pakuma bags here

First thoughts on the iPad

Fortunately, despite the Icelandic volcano's best efforts to stop me, I've managed to bag myself an iPad while holidaying in the US.

Having had it for a day I can tell you these things are awesome! I was a little bit underwhelmed by the announcement, just like a lot of skeptics, but on trying one in the Apple store I was immediately grabbed. My first thoughts were that it's a little heavier than I expected, but that in itself is quite reassuring. This (and yes I am typing this on said iPad!) feels like a proper bit of kit, solid but not overly heavy. I was shocked that even a couple of weeks after launch they are flying out of the stores. The first store I tried was sold out and was expecting an unknown quantity to arrive at 12pm, all of which they expected to sell by 1pm. Unfortunately I had to be elsewhere, but at around 1pm I was at another store where they had just received their delivery and snagged myself one. Less than an hour later, that store was sold out too, and I lost count of the number of people who left with one in the time I was being served. If I had to hazard a guess I'd say there were more than 50 in about 15 minutes.
Unboxing it was the usual Apple delight. They know how to package a product at Cupertino, even with minimal packaging these days the whole thing feels like opening a Christmas present. I sync'd a lot of my iPhone apps and they run like a charm (Settlers actually is much better because of the large screen, and I'm sure there'll be other games and apps benefit similarly).
Anyway, I could rattle on, but you've seen other reviews and Apple waxing lyrical, so I won't. What I will say is that the thing that stands out most for me is iBooks (which, to my surprise, does not come pre-installed - it's a free download). Beautiful, easy and a step forward that makes me think that my days of spending a small fortune with Amazon may be numbered. And if you're wondering, the screen is perfectly readable on an extremely sunny day. On that note, I have some reading to do :)

By the way, do you want to win an iPad? Follow allmacshop on Twitter for a chance. When they get to 5000 followers they are giving one away.

Update on Tuesday, May 4, 2010 at 3:07PM by Chris Fields

Back in the UK now, and having tested the iPad (i.e. used it a lot on holiday) I can now say its definitely a winner. For a product thats still early on in its life, there's a lot of good things to say about it. Firstly. as I said it looks and feels great. There's a scattering of great apps around already, and thats ignoring the plethora of perfectly acceptable iPhone apps you could run.

Battery life is excellent (several hours of reading, playing games and watching movies is achievable), and recharge time is very quick using the supplied mains adapter (not so good through my Macbook however). Some of the games are very, very addictive (the strangely named Plants vs Zombies HD for example). Add that to the the great version of scrabble that runs along with the free tile holder app you can get for iPhone, and I can see how the iPad will become very well received by the non-technical home user. I can also testify that having shown my iPad to family who are not in the slightest bit interested in computers, they were very taken with the device, in fact almost tempted to get one out in the US. They resisted, but for how long?

There's new apps coming out every day. Dropbox released their iPad app today for example (and if you don't use dropbox where've you been?).

One thing I did find though is that not all the ebooks I'm interested in are available on the Apple iBooks store. Not to worry though.....there's a Kindle app (free download) which means you can download the Kindle versions of many books straight from Amazon (so my days of excess spending on Amazon may not be completely over). Word to the wise though - the Kindle app is the poor, scruffily dressed cousin of iBooks. It works, but it just ain't as nice.

Dock clock :) Now this is a great app for anyone holidaying in a villa with a pool that doesn't have an outside clock. I'm sure that wasn't the primary aim for the app's writers but it fit my needs perfectly :) It also looks nice on my desktop showing the time and weather forecast for my current location at work.

Last suggestion for now - ditch Shazam, get Soundhound. Super app that will recognise a song even from me humming it. And quite often also gives you the lyrics.

Twitter Acquire Tweetie iPhone App

Loren Brichter, creator of probably the most popular iPhone and Mac desktop app for Twitter has announced that Twitter have acquired Tweetie for iPhone.

It is not yet clear whether the deal includes Tweetie for Mac - the excellent desktop Twitter client.

Brichter will be joining the Twitter mobile team to help them turn Tweetie.app into Twitter.app which will be released shortly as a free app (Tweetie 2 is currently £1.79 in the App Store).

Congratulations to Loren and to Twitter - this is great news!

See the announcement on the Twitter blog here and on Loren's site here.

iPhone/iPod/iPad Warning!

For those of you who have not upgraded your iPhone or iPod Touch to the latest (3.1.3) firmware for whatever reason - and Steve Jobs himself is among you; watch out!

As App developers rush to make their Apps iPad compatible, they may be forced to make their App subscribe to a minimum requirement of the 3.1.3 firmware.

If you don't check every App which has an update when you sync with iTunes, you may find yourself not able to use that App anymore. I know, because it happened to me with Evernote.

Evernote is a great App, which you can use to sync notes between your iDevice, your Desktop and the web and I use it frequently. So you can imagine how disappointed I was when I found that my working copy had been removed during an update and I was no longer able to access my notes on my iPhone.

I don't blame Evernote or even Apple for this change, technology has to move on and after all and the 3.1.3 firmware update is free (Apple kindly provides this in an attempt to prevent folks from jailbreaking their devices).

I just wish that I had been warned that the new update was not compatible with my device *before* iTunes removed the old version!

I have been able to get around the issue, but others I have been in contact with on Twitter have not been so lucky.

So, you've been warned - if you see an update for an App, don't just hit the OK button - check it for compatibilty yourself, because iTunes sure won't do it for you.

Finally, our webstore opens for business

Well after several weeks of redevelopment, our newly acquired webstores (www.allmacshop.co.uk, www.pcdeli.co.uk and www.alldeli.co.uk) are now open for business.

allmacshop deals with, well, all things Mac. Hardware, software, peripherals and accessories. We're adding products to the store all the time, and if there's anything in particular you want please just give us a shout.

pcdeli is the same site essentially for PC users, and alldeli is both PC and Mac.