When I picked up my new MacBook this past fall, there was a mix of joy and anticipation running through the air. My trusty iBook G4, which had been with me through thick and thin, had gone belly-up and as I opened the box for the MacBook, I both missed the iBook G4 and felt like I didn't really deserve this beautiful new computer, even if the iBook G4's logic board failed to recognize any hard drive installed in the unit and I needed a portable machine nonetheless.

As the weeks went by, I tried to keep the MacBook pristine. Never one to cover a laptop in protective and way-cool band stickers, the best I could do was keep the keyboard lining in place so the keys didn't track up the screen and place the laptop in my old laptop bag where I hoped for the best. This worked to a certain extent, but a laptop bag contains everything else needed to get through a given day and little scratches began to appear around the top and bottom.

When Jason sent me a Wrappers review unit, I wasn't sure what to think. The cover looked like a sock (my friends have called it a "MacBook cozy"), but felt padded and reassuring without being bulky.

Inserting the MacBook into the sleeve for the first time, you notice the quality of the stitching but also struggle to a small degree. The Wrapper sleeve needs to be pulled and prodded a little bit to initially let the laptop in. From there, you slide it down into the sleeve and are typically done within a few seconds.

The end result is a padded, comfortable laptop with a sufficient amount of layering to protect it from standard abuse both within the laptop bag and throughout yet not enough padding to make it bulky. Combined, the two make an outstanding protection system, although the Wrappers sleeve is sufficient to carry the MacBook around in without worry.

Despite the initial tight stitching, the only concern, and it's a mild one, is the fact that this is an open-ended bag. In the past, a neoprene-based bag I once owned for a PowerBook 5300c seemed reassuring since its zipper surrounded the entire laptop, leaving nothing exposed. The Wrappers bag leaves either the port side or the optical drive sided exposed to the elements and while I don't believe anything bad is in store for this end, it'd be nice to see a future version of the sleeve with a more pronounced extended lip that could cover the open side (the web site mentions an extra pocket, but this doesn't draw the attention to itself that it needs to).

That being said, the sleeve has done an outstanding job and is comfortably padded without being bulky in the least. They build a mean sleeve over there and the fact that you can order a sleeve in any color with a customized letter-based logo on it doesn't hurt.

The Wrappers sleeve retails for $14.99 British Pounds (roughly US$29.84) and has proven invaluable in keeping my MacBook padded and unscathed during travel. The sleeve itself isn't perfect, but is the right product in the right price range to protect your new or current 13" MacBook laptop.

Final score: 4 out of 5 bolts.