Let"s face it, office life is boring. However, this month"s cool office tools are guaranteed to perk up your time at work. Sean Bacher announces June"s top ten.

Canon Pixma iP90 mobile printer

Claimed to be perfect for printing those happy snaps on the move, the Pixma offers a print resolution of up to 4 800 x 1 200dpi. What make this printer even more enticing to the holiday-maker is that it is able to operate on either battery or mains. The Pixma iP90 is said to be capable of printing speeds of up to 16ppm mono and 12ppm colour, and, according to the company, can produce a 4 x 6" photo print in less than a minute.

Availability: Contact Canon SA on (011) 265-4900 for a dealer in your area.

Zebra RW 420 mobile printer

Designed for printing receipts on the go, the RW 420 meets the IP54 dust and water resistance rating. According to the manufacturer, the printer is able to withstand the harsh demands of a number of route accounting and field service printing applications, including: invoices, delivery receipts, service estimates, sales orders, and inventory management.

Availability: Contact Zebra Technologies on (011) 780-8330 for information.

AOpen XC Cube EX915 Sporty

The XC Cube Sport features a built-in 5.1 Channel sound card, four S-ATA connectors, eight USB ports, three IEEE 1394 ports, two 3,5" hard-disk drive bays, and a 5,25" drive bay. XC Cube EX915 Sporty, also incorporates the Intel 915G chip set and LGA 775 CPU socket. According to the company, the XC Cube also offers support for the new Intel Pentium 4 Prescott 3xx and 5xx-series CPUs, and boasts an external bus speed of 533/800MHz.

Availability: Contact Rectron on (011) 203-1000 for stockist"s details.

Thermaltake"s Armour VA 8000 Series

Thermaltake"s latest PC chassis, the tower-format Armour VA 8000 Series, features both air and water cooling designs geared to keep the PC cool when the going gets tough. According to the company, the cooling systems within the VA 8000 series rely on four fans, two for intake at the front of the unit and two for exhaust - one each at the rear and on top of the casing. There are individual cooling strategies for the power supply and CPU.

Availability: Contact Corex on (011) 707-5000 for a dealer in your area.

Logitech diNovo cordless desktop

The Logitech diNovo cordless desktop is designed for desktop use as well as for people on the move, who carry their notebooks with them everywhere they go. The desktop solution includes a cordless keyboard complete with three hot-set keys for easy access to the Internet, e-mail and for searching. Also included on the keyboard are buttons for controlling volume and other multimedia aspects, not to mention one-touch buttons for quick access to your most used applications. The solution also includes a cordless mouse, and a separate cordless numeric pad, that doubles as a smart calculator, thermometer, and time and date display.

Availability: The diNovo is available from most consumer electronic outlets.

Canon desktop document scanners

Canon has introduced two additions to its document scanner portfolio, the DR 2580C and DR 5010C. Both scanners are compact, in order to save space in the office, and are aimed at organisations that have high-volume desktop scanning requirements. Both devices offer 3D colour correction, which aims to increase the colour accuracy of each scanned document, by picking up individual document and pictorial differences, or "quirks" from the original, in order to create a sharper, more consistent, copy.

Availability: Contact Canon on (011) 265-4900 for a dealer in your area.

GeForce XFX graphics cards

These graphics card are claimed to be perfect for the gaming enthusiast. They are available with various amounts of memory and at various speeds - all depending on how much of a budget you have, and how serious you really are about gaming. The cards are supplied with a two-year warranty, and range in price from R299 through to R4 999 for a really high-end card.

Availability: Contact Axis on (011) 237-7000 for information.

HP Business Inkjet 2800 series

The HP Business Inkjet 2800 series is an A3+ wide format printer. It features four individual ink cartridges, and offers printing speeds of up to 24ppm in monochrome and 21ppm in colour. It also offers networking capabilities.

Availability: Contact HP on 0800 11 8883 for more information.

Epson TM-C100 SEAJet

Designed for on-demand, in-store printing, when counter space is at a premium, the TM-C100 aims to allow variable data to be customised in order to create tailor-made offers and personalised vouchers to customers. With an auto-cutter and auto-sheet feeder, the printer is said to be capable of accepting a wide range of media, including large diameter paper rolls, card, continuous labels and special coated papers. According to the company, the printer is perfect for producing price tags, gift-cards, tickets, vouchers, membership cards and promotional coupons.

Availability: Visit Epson"s Web site at http://www.epson.co.za for the retail outlet closest to you.

LG 32-inch super flat CRT

The 32-inch super slim flat (SSF) TV tackles the most noticeable weakness of traditional CRT TVs - thickness, by reducing the depth of the traditional colour picture tube from 500mm to 350mm. According to LG, the size of the TV box itself is to be reduced to 390mm from 600mm.

Availability: Visit LG"s Web site at http://www.lge.com for stockist details.