A Quick trip update. I finally travelled with the new v2 fully packed for a 6 day international trip. The bag served as well as the v1 and the improvements I listed above in my review helped - specifically the longer handle, larger laptop bag. It withstood the travel as I swam across seven seas, fought fiery dragons in far away lands, wrestled with royal bengal tigers, got to scratch the ear of a grizzly and chopped the heads of a three headed reptile while I played the violin for a princess in a land of mystery and magic..

Anyway while I was doing all of that, I did notice two things in the new version worth bringing up

1. While the new version does stand up straight, it is actually a little more unstable when fully packed with a laptop, wires, and my ipad mini up front. It falls over more easily if you just carelessly plop it on the floor. Once standing, it does not keel over, but you need to stand it up correctly. I noticed that when fully loaded (6 days plus gizmos) it never really stands on the wheels - the weight in front (laptop etc) lifts the wheels up and the entire bag is actually resting on the plastic balancer up front. I am guessing straightening the bag lean added to this issue. Note that I still think its better than v1s lean.

2. The version that was sent to me had the laptop zip on the side, which looked like an improvement to it being at the bottom (v1). Well, as it turns out, the zip bottom is facing towards the ground and away from you. This makes it impossible for you to even attempt to re-attaching the laptop bag while standing. You necessarily need to lay the bag down. I don't really know why this was done, but I'd much rather the zip base was facing up.

Besides these two points, great bag and enjoyed not having to compromise on clothes and yet not have to check in, including those dinky regional jets when you are trying to make a connection.