A thick, double zipper opens about halfway down the side of the Kensington Contour Terrain Notebook Case, letting you readily access most of the bag's interior without running the risk of losing its contents. We like the light-khaki lining inside the bag, which makes it easy to spot even the smallest thumbdrive. One side of the bag includes a thickly padded laptop pocket with a Velcro strap to help secure your laptop in place; the other side includes a slender, slit pocket that's ideal for pens (it also accommodated our Treo 650, though the fit was snug) as well as an 8x6-inch zippered pocket for accessories. The rest of the bag's roomy interior is unstructured and can easily accommodate your laptop's power cord plus several spiral notebooks or a Sunday newspaper.
The Contour Terrain's canvas-and-corduroy exterior provides a welcome respite from the sea of nondescript black-nylon bags you usually see on the street. However, the fabric could benefit from some additional structure. When we loaded the bag with the 15.4-inch Toshiba Tecra A8 and a few books, the fabric stretched, and the bag became considerably distorted. The anchor points for the shoulder strap and the handles seemed to be carrying the whole weight of the bag, which didn't inspire our confidence in the bag's long-term durability; the straps seemed likely to rip out after several months of daily use. When we removed the books and carried just the laptop, the bag still lost its shape; the anchors looked similarly strained even when the bag held only a 12-inch ultraportable laptop. Even if the shoulder strap and handles prove to be more firmly attached than they appear, we simply don't like the bag's distorted appearance when we carry it.
