Seems to be alot of variations even within the backpack crowd. Personally I prefer to have the shoulder straps snug with the pack up high on my back. I don't like it swinging or bouncing around at all. Luckily I don't have to lug my laptop back and forth. I just use an 8Gb flashdrive to copy files and data back and forth, and if need be I have 250 Gb USB drive that is about the size of two decks of cards.