Many of us make the mistake of using subpar equipment in our home offices. Save your loved ones from this fate with a few well-chosen office tools.

Wireless mouse: Logitech VX Revolution

Selecting a wireless mouse can be a very frustrating experience. A Computerworld editor recently bought three of them on successive days, returning each of them the next day -- whereupon she gave up on wireless mice. The entire affair is very subjective experience, to be sure. But after lots of hands-on testing, we've found the perfect wireless mouse for typical business and home use.

Logitech's VX Revolution is a dual-laser wireless mouse with a flywheel-style scroll wheel that can also be set to click, click, click like conventional scroll wheels. The wheel works great in both settings, and the flywheel is perfect for long-scrolling pages. The VX Revolution's dual laser is more accurate and more forgiving on uneven surfaces than earlier dual lasers we've used.

This mouse offers the standard five buttons plus zoom in, zoom out, and search; it also scrolls left and right with the scroll wheel. The built-in search button lets you highlight a word on a Web page and click it to search with your operating system's search facility or with Web-based search engines. The accompanying USB stick is very small and slips into a door at the back of the unit. Press a button and it pops out again.