I knew I had gone too far when I ran over my briefcase with a pickup truck. For years I’ve coveted a Zero Halliburton briefcase. You’d recognize it if you saw one: a sleek, silver aluminum case that looks like it should be filled with documents important to the security of the Free World; either that or $700,000 in un marked bills. It’s been used on space missions; it’s survived plane crashes and last year’s Malibu fires; I wanted one.
When I learned that Zero Halliburton had begun manufacturing a version of their case for notebook computers, I requested one before I caught my breath. “Why do you want to review it?”
“I want to see if I can break it.” (pause)
“How are you going to try to break it?”
“By all means necessary.”
(another pause)
“Well, all right.”
I can’t break it.
I have a circa-1988 Toshiba T1000 laptop that barely has enough memory to run DOS 3. It’s been in my basement for years, but now it’s time to recall it to service. I strapped it inside the Zero Halliburton and started Operation Try To Break My Obsolete Machine. I pushed the briefcase off the side of my desk. No damage. I dropped the briefcase from chest level. Again no damage, except for my foot.
My office is on the second floor of an office building. You know what I did. The briefcase picked up several large scratches before it came to a stop against a parking meter, but the laptop was not hurt. During a quick trip to the local supermarket parking lot, I let my 1992 Ford Taurus roll over the briefcase three times. Again, no damage. I talked someone in a pickup truck into doing the same. I was frustrated that I couldn’t hurt the case, but then I called in my personal destruction force: my two preschool-age children .
Like comrades of the gorilla in the Samsonite commercial, they did everything short of light it on fire (I did try that, by the way). It survived.
Can’t use it, either. A Zero Halliburton can withstand everything, apparently, but I cannot withstand it. Of course it’s heavy, but I was unprepared for how uncomfortable the handle felt and how poorly it served the task of housing a notebook computer. All you can fit in this particular case are the computer and a power cord. Once you start adding anything else–even a slim stack of paper–it’s difficult to close and lock the case.
In other words, it can survive anything, in the unlikely event that you ever want to use it. I love looking like a Secret Agent Man with my cool Zero Halliburton, but it’s about as comfortable as lugging around an Amway display case. And is there anything more uncool than that?
