OFFICE

From X-Acto®, the folks who make the precision arts & craft knives, the "Bulldog" is an old-school crank pencil sharpener with a translucent blue, green or red case so you can keep tabs on your shavings and watch the menacing teeth grind away. Unit is roughly 5" tall x 4" wide (including crank handle) x 3” deep. The square rubber pad on the bottom provides suction when the side lever is pulled. Works best on a flat surface, but you knew that.

These miniature versions of the traditional floor fan say "Retro Mini Fan" on them, and the retro part is that the blades and cages are all metal. The handy part is that they're just 5-3/8" dia and the plug is a USB, ready to cool you off right from your (actual) desktop. Tilts 180° up and down and comes with a 4-foot cord. Super quiet, too. We'll pick one in red, blue or black.

Behold the first attractively designed electric pencil sharpener since Edward C. Hoffman’s 1943 art deco Electro-Pointer. (You could look it up.) The Spira from X-ACTO® is a rotated rectangular column, 5-3/4” tall x 2-3/4” square, in lipstick red plastic. Plugs in via a wall adapter, and has a hardened steel cutter inside plus a one-touch release on the bottom for emptying the shavings. We see a future classic.

And the word is for you to cool it. You're going to get overheated if you don't order one of these little black plastic desk fans. Measures 5” dia, swivels on a 6”-wide base, and plugs into your laptop's (or desktop’s) USB port via a 3-foot cord. This fan is very quiet, unlike your family or your office mates around lunchtime.

That would be a library, we think, but the word's been co-opted by the business community for fliers, brochures and hand-outs. This literature holder is a single, in clear plastic, 9-1/4" wide x 10" tall with a 3” deep front pocket that will take a 1-1/2” stack of literature. Stands up by itself on little easel feet, or hangs on a wall from a slotted hole.

You say your office is the coffee shop on the corner? You say you wish you had a desk like all the big kids in the offices downtown? You’re in luck because this all-black plastic desk set has everything you need in a 4-1/2" dia x 4-1/2" tall rotating pen stand, including (2) pencils, a pen, scissors, 6” ruler, (5) pushpins, a pencil sharpener, small stapler with (500) staples, (10) paper clips, a gum eraser and a staple remover. It’ll be like having a job!

There’s power all around us. Surging like crazy. In many media. This is why we all need a multimedia surge protector like this 125V 15A 6-outlet surge protector, which will take up to 1500 joules with a max surge voltage of 6kV and a max spike current of 75kA. Has 400V protection between hot and neutral, and neutral to ground, and 500V protection between hot and ground. Also has inline coax protection and EMI and RFI filtering. The (2) sets of (3) outlets each can be tilted 45 degrees to the side. Indoor use only. UL.

Do we love multi-purpose stuff? Yes, we do. Herewith, we present our Swiss-ish army-like file folder organizer. A 14-1/2" x 9" x 7-1/2" gizmo with (4) plastic file holders and a 13" x 3-7/8" white dry-erase board on the front for you to write messages to yourself on with the thoughtfully included black marker.

This little silver plastic basic-function calculator measures 3-1/4" x 5-1/2" with a clear plastic ruler that folds down on both sides. Open it and it looks oddly like a communications satellite.The ruler is millimeters/centimeters only, up to 320mm or 32cm. But it's still a lovely straight-edge, or a gift for a Canadian friend. Runs on a single replaceable button-cell battery, included but may be dead..