Netbooks are tiny. Finding a stylish netbook case is difficult. You can generally find sleeves and some smaller bags but sleeves generally fit your netbook a bit tight to fit the power cord too. If you want a mouse or a few other accessories, you can forget taking just a sleeve. Bolt Bags aims to change this with their new netbook line.

Bolt Bags has a very limited selection of styles and colors. In fact, you can only get bags in olive, dark teal or black. Their are also only two styles. The teal bags are the Chic style and the olive and black bags are called bowler bags. They do indeed look like a bag designed to carry a bowling ball, except they are much thinner of course!

The interior of the bowler bag has some places to hold pens, a wireless or wired mouse and some business cards as well as a padded compartment for your netbook.

The outside of the bag has two zippered pockets and a deeper pocket that is accessed by pulling up the flap. This deep pocket is big enough for the power cable and I also can fit a few small things in it as well.

The strap on the bowler bag feels like it’s made from seat belt straps. They are very solid and the clips that are on the strap feel a lot like the clips on my Skooba Checkthrough but a little smaller.

The Chic bag has a light blue interior. The pen slots are not on the Chic bag. There is a padded compartment like the bowler, but instead of several smaller pockets for mice and business cards, there is only one long pocket.

Outside has one zippered pocket for small things and a couple deep pockets that are each half the size of the one deep pocket on the bowler bag. There should be enough room for your power cord in one of these and a mouse or pad of paper in the other.

The fabric on both of these bags seem very durable. I have carried the bowler style for about a week and it’s holding up rather well.

Bolt Bags sent me samples of both bags and they have been gracious to let me keep both of them. I gave one of them to my wife for her birthday last week.

Both of the Chic and Bowler are available on Amazon.com for $24.00. Not bad for a case of this quality.

What I liked: Durable construction and also adequate for just grabbing your netbook and going.

What needs improvement: This isn’t a big complaint, but none of the Bolt Bags look very manly. However, this is really hard to do with a bag that is designed to only carry the netbook and a few accessories. The small size of the netbook just make the messenger style seem, well, like a purse. I may take some space shuttle patches or something to sew on the side of the bowler to make it look a little less girly.