Skooba Previews Checkpoint-Safe Bags

Anxiously awaiting the day you might not have to take your notebook out at airport security? Skooba Design is eager to keep you eager.

Citing the “tremendous amount of interest” generated when the Transportation Security Administration put out a request for proposal s on designed for notebook computer bags that could be permitted to pass through airport security without requiring passengers to remove the computers, Skooba Design is showing off some preliminary information on its forthcoming “Checkpoint-Friendly” notebook bags it expects to make available by the end of summer 2008. The verdict seems to be that checkpoint-friendly bags will keep your notebook covered…and do very little else.

Although Skooba is quick to point out that none of its designs (or any checkpoint-friendly designs from other makers) carry any stamp of approval or endorsement from the TSA, the idea is that these notebook bags should be transparent to X-ray systems and other scanning technologies so security officers can scan the bags without having to remove the notebooks. However, this also seems to mean there’s little or no space for peripherals like power adapters, cables, USB devices, spare batteries, and other common accouterments of a traveling notebook users. Although the TSA doesn’t require that peripherals and other items be separate from the computer, the intent seems clear: checkpoint-friendly bags shouldn’t make scanning any more complicated than it already is, and stacking peripheral devices and other peripherals vertically with a notebook computer makes interpreting images of the bag’s contents that much more difficult.

Skooba says it has produced and tested almost a dozen prototypes, and is moving forward with production on its Checkthrough bags with an eye toward putting them in the market in late summer or early autumn of 2008. (We assume they’re talking about the northern hemisphere.) Even with a checkpoint-friendly bag, though, there’s no guarantee airport security will let you through without removing your notebook: support for checkpoint-friendly bags is expected to be phased in at U.S. locations and may take some time.