For those of us who like to take our Xbox 360 to our friend’s house or other social gatherings, Madcatz has made a wonderful carrier for the Xbox 360. Finding a way to transport consoles around has always been a challenge. To have the complete security of your $400.00 console, Madcatz has created an amazing transport system that is durable, dependable and moreover incredible.

The Xbox 360 Messenger Bag simply solves all the transport problems you need. The design of the bag is quite simple. It has a main pocket with a primary middle pocket holder for the Xbox 360. At the bottom of the main pocket, there is a padded divider which folds up allowing you to store your AV cables, power pack and power Cord. Once the power cords are stored the divider folds down and acts as a padded floor for your Xbox 360 to rest on. In terms of space, the MadCatz review accessory is simply incredible with the additional seperate holsters to the side which fit an enormous amount of stuff such as 4 entire Xbox 360 games in total.

Once your 360 is situated inside the main pocket, the extra padding in the pocket allows for extra protection for your console. The middle pocket is capable of holding up to 4 360 controllers. The provided one mesh-zipped pocket that are located in front of the middle pocket followed by 2 mesh pockets on each side of the bag are great for storing extra cables you might have.

In terms of simple and effective carrying, the Madcatz Xbox 360 Transport Bag is a must-have for anyone looking to secure their Xbox 360 during travel and international/domestic flights. Just make sure to take it out during customs and security checks while treating it at a laptop. The comfort of the bag auspiciously carries the Xbox 360 so much that it often makes us forgetful we are even carrying anything.

Original Review Content by Contributor: James Pikover

When it comes to music game instruments, there is very little selection in terms of hardware. It’s essentially first party from Harmonix’s Rock Band 1 or 2, any version of the Guitar Hero guitars, and now the Guitar Hero World Tour drums and microphone. With the exception of a few things here and there, such as ION Audio’s Premium Drum Set and Pearl’s Omega Drum Pedal, there is no market for music gaming equipment.

For those of us who have spent too much time and money at game shops buying the latest software and hardware, you’ll recognize Madcatz as a name to stay away from except for very specific situations. In the past, they have been known as that 3rd party peripheral company who makes worse hardware than 1st parties, but with one or two features that made them sell well enough for some of us to buy. Features like a macro button or wireless connectivity (back when wireless wasn’t the standard).

After keeping quiet for a few years, Madcatz is making a comeback in a big way: making music equipment for the likes of Rock Band. They have introduced a very solid lineup of peripherals, and we had the chance to look at their three biggest ones: the Fender Precision Bass, standalone microphone and cymbal expansion kit. The results are surprising.

IStarUSA is known to make great technology: from power supplies, to internal divisions and in this case, the latest Xage-n99-us hard drive docking station. Coming with the works of RoHS compliancy, the latest storage division supports up to 2.5” and 3.5” SATA hard drives up to 1TB, offering for a versatility that we just don’t see too often in terms of storage devices and the way the efficiency of items are brought up.

Specifications & Features:

SATA to USB 2.0/ FireWire 800/ Ethernet even eSATA interfaces

80mm Cooling Fan with Speed Controller

One Year Warranty

Size: 80mm

Speed: 0~1,800 rpm

Noise Level: 23.8 dB(A)

Air Flow: 31.15 CFM

The docking station comes with the USB cable, sexy HDD rubber covers and a power cable with the main mount. As a fully PC, Mac and Linux compatible device, the iStarUSA docking station supports makes sure that it doesn’t come off as cheap, with a blue activity light for a smitten indicator.

The iStarUSA HDD Docking Station boasts 480Mbps of data transfer rates for both 3.5” and 2.5” SATA hard drives in a very sleek design and reels in at about $20-$30 for something to aid in the aggravation of trying to figure out what HDD has what. In a land of external hard drive solutions, iStarUSA manages to make the trend towards a cheaper significance, allowing for ordinary consumers to save time, space, and most importantly money by hotswap.

iStarUSA claims a lot for a device that looks elegant but simple. After testing the device with our fastest RPM Western Digital SATA drive, the iStar USA performed admirably, exceeding expectations for something a bit peculiar, even for us. While total efficiency remained at 85%, the device itself was well worth the cash after all, a great news to those with hard drives as backups or picture storage.

As for noise level, surprisingly the unit itself does not make much noise (21.8 dB) using an oscillator, and the hard drive is the only thing that makes noise while accessing internal RAM. Not bad at all.

Rejoice. iStarUSA’s xAge-N99-US USB 2.0 Hard Drive Docking Station is here.

]]> http://whatifgaming.com/istarusa-hard-drive-docking-station-review-plug-n-go/feed 0 http://whatifgaming.com/ati-radeon-4870-x2-exclusive-review-overstrides http://whatifgaming.com/ati-radeon-4870-x2-exclusive-review-overstrides#comments Tue, 19 Aug 2008 02:30:02 +0000 Usman Ihtsham http://whatifgaming.com/?p=1535

Back when we did our review on the Crossfire 4870’s, we were left utterly impressed by the sheer amount of productivity and results that provided for an effulgence of gaming pleasure over even the latest of the Nvidia offering of the GTX 280’s and GTX 260’s with value of power and price. It seems AMD is setting the barriers this generation, and trying to cross them over and over again. With the introduction of the HD 4850 1GB and HD 4870 1GB, AMD had amped up the offering for the initial consumer price point models. Now, they’ve just broken their own barrier with the latest innovation of the ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 series. As the first consumer graphics card with 2 GB of memory, and the first card to implement a 512bit GDDR5 memory architecture through the inordinate amount of pixel pipelines, the ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 graphics card stoically dominates the competition in a whole new level for the enthusiast gamers.

We wanted to make something people can love, and feel secure with. – Dirk Meyer, President, AMD: Commenting to WhatIfGaming on the HD 4870 X2 card.

AMD is proudly bringing PC gamers 1.0 TeraFLOP Graphics Performance, with a single GPU that consumes only 110W of power in the HD 4850. Going head to head with the 8800GTX, 8800GTS & GT, and 9600GT series of cards. Developing a new TeraScale graphics engine, AMD is excited to deliver an impassive experience for gaming. With enhanced anti-aliasing 24X (AA) and AF, gamers will find a new realism more improved than previous versions of cards that all had AA and AF flickering sporadic problems. You’ve read our Cinema 2.0 coverage and are waiting for our detailed article on the latest 4800 series line, including ATI Radeon HD 4870 details. Now, we want to reveal one part with the ATI Radeon HD 4850 that should provide a glimpse into the new series line. With power that supports DX 10.1 fully unlike the GTX 200’s, the ATI Radeon HD 4850 brings efficiency together against the competition through features such as ATI Powerplay and ATI Avivo HD to give gamers a more enhanced experience all around.

Let’s take a look at the key features:

• 512MB GDDR3 Memory

• Core Clock: 625MHz

• Single Slot

• 2.0 Gbps
• 110W Power Requirement
• 256-bit memory interface
• DirectX 10.1 Support
• 24x custom filter AA and high performance AF
• ATI CrossFireX multi-GPU support for scalable performance
• PCI-E 2.0 support
• ATI Avivio HD video and display technology for Blu-ray and 7.1 surround sound support with On-Chip HDCPd
• ATI Powerplay

Let’s go on to the test system.