If you need to carry a laptop along with a bunch of camera gear, Crumpler and LowePro are two names to count on. Well-built bags last a lifetime; I have a Domke camera bag that's been in my family for four decades. You'll probably get the same service out of the Crumpler Brazillion Dollar Home bag ($295 street) and LowePro Classified 250 AW ($230). They'll hold a 15- to 17-inch notebook, cameras, lenses, and flashes, or you can take out the dividers and just carry stuff for a day trip: water bottles, sun block, windbreaker. Here's a comparison.

Crumpler Brazillion Dollar Home Bag
A visit to the Crumpler website provides a fascinating diversion, although the site's flash version is so entertaining you may have trouble finding the bag you want. This is about the biggest bag Crumpler makes. It's black on the outside, flaming orange on the inside, with lots of stiff padded partitions that attach to the sides with hook-and-loop (Velcro) fasteners. In fact, the bag comes with even more dividers in a spares package. The bag is tall (13 x 17 x 9 HWD) and the partitions allow you to create multiple levels for packing more stuff than you thought possible. That packability also means what's on the bottom isn't readily available if you want to grab the little used ultra-wideangle lens.

The Brazillion Dollar fits a 17-inch Macbook or 15-inch Windows laptops (most Toshiba, Dell, and HP 17-inchers are just too bulky), two digital cameras, four lenses, and plenty of other stuff. That's what it fits if you pack tight. The bag's sidewalls and the dividers are stiff (at least when the bag is new) which means more padding but less ease of shoving a fat (wide) lens or water bottle into one partition and it automatically borrows spaces from the next partition.  When you lift open the outer flap cover, there's a hinged fabric tray that covers and protects what's underneath; it also makes for an additional packing layer. You also get a removable rain cover, tripod straps, a backpack adapter, and a sleeve for slipping the the Brazillion Dollar atop a rolling bag.

Brazillion Dollar? At 7.5 pounds empty, you might also call it the Bazillion Pound bag. With a laptop, transformer, camera, lenses, perhaps a water bottle, you've got more than 20 pounds on your shoulder.

If you want a less stiff bag, Crumpler also makes bags that are more in the nature of flexible shells with simpler partitions such as the Eight Million Dollar Home Bag (13 x 15 x 8 HWD, $170, photo at left). That's home as in home to your gear, rather than as home (dabbler) not pro user.

LowePro Classified 250 AW

This recent bag represents Lowepro's foray into bags that aren't black objects with perfect right-angle corners. It's 11 x 18 x 14 HWD, which sounds bigger than the Crumpler Brazillion Dollar, but I found it a bit more compact. Go with the sepia not black nylon exterior.

The main compartment of the Classified 250 AW opens with a zipper running along the top; a flap covers the side compartments. The zipper makes for easier access when the bag is on the ground or on your shoulder. A zippered gusset adds about an inch of front-to-back depth to the bag; I wish the gusset went around the circumference (not just top half) and expanded the depth by 2-3 inches because while you want to pack tight to fit the bag under an airplane seat or in the trunk of your car, when you're out and about, you may want to be able to swap lenses quickly, or grab for that water bottle, and it's hard when the contents are tightly packed.

The bag is a bit lighter at 4.2 pounds. The rain cover (AW means all-weather bag) is attached so you can never lose it (good idea) and a microfiber cloth is sewn into the interior so you polish a lens or your sunglasses. It, too, has a rolling bag passthrough sleeve.

If you care for capacity over style, check out instead the classic LowePro Stealth Reporter D650 AW (13 x 17 x 11 HWD, $150 street) for 17-inch notebooks and the LowePro Stealth Reporter D650 (12 x 16 x 11, $130) for 13- to 15-inch notebooks.

The Choice: Crumpler or LowePro?

If you want the most capacity and if you want to honor companies doing neat (okay, quirky) things with their websites, go with the Crumpler Brazillion Dollar bag. If you want a lighter bag and lower price, get the Lowepro Classified 250 AW.  In every case, it helps if you can see the bags in person at a camera super-store, or check out what friends have bought. Often, you'll go in looking for one bag and find the next smaller or larger bag is really what you need. Buy carefully. These are ballistic nylon heirlooms that will be around for a lifetime.