I did a post recently on the snowball mic from blue microphones, I also got a snowflake mic at the same time, so here is a post about that too :D

the snowflake is the baby brother of the snowball a cardiod USB microphone with a built-in soundcard, so you only need a usb port for it to work.

1) the packaging is good quality, just like the snowball, I suspect that all blue mics get cool boxes.