Novelty. It's a wonderful thing. Take this USB optical mouse-cum-Skypephone; what a great idea! But given the fact that novelty wears off, there's a limit to how much we're prepared to pay for such items.

One thing even the most ardent PC fan has to give to Apple is itsunfailing eye for a cool shape. Its computers wouldn't have been nearlyas successful if they didn't look stylish enough to sit comfortably ina museum of design

This isn't the first programmable-macro keyboard to come through ourhardware-shaped letterbox, but it's certainly one of the mostinteresting. Out of the box, the G15 features 18 extra keys that can beprogrammed with custom functions

From the nylon-braided USB cord to the removable weights tray, everypart of the G5 is beautifully crafted. This 2,000 DPI mouse offers eight sensitivity levels that can be customised and selected on the fly

The Harmony H885 has a killer feature in its PC and Mac-compatible USB link. You can hook the remote directly up to your computer and then - using a surprisingly fat online database - download info to the remote for a smooth setup

As a collection of home cinema equipment grows, keeping control of it using the stock remotes can become a headache. Your equipment might include a DVD player, a DAB radio, plasma screen, processor and amplifier

Logitech must think that there should be some correlation between costand the size of the box, with the LX 700 shipping with more clean airthan any other setup here.

As far as the timeline of technology goes, the humble barcode is soancient that it's got whiskers on it. Barcodes are a simple technologyusing printed stripes that are scanned by a basic LED scanner

More immediately impressive than Logitech's effort, the Kameleon 6-in-1 is the latest remote from stalwart One For All. The company has made a real effort to improve the aesthetics of its products over the last two generations...

Logitech is a PC peripheral company that acquired Harmony - a reasonably successful remote control specialist. The H655, therefore, still bears the hallmarks of a PC-related product.

Where would we be without the humble remote control? Well, we'd be getting up off our lazy arses every five seconds to change the channel, tweak the volume or pause the Sky , that's where

The downside to home cinema is you need an octopus to handle all the remotes. Enter One For All's Kameleon controller, complete with funky glow-in-the-dark display (handy when recreating cinema lighting in the home)

Remote Solution's Battery Free Universal Remote is fully charged for seven-days after turning its dial 50 times clockwise the first time around, and 30 times thereafter.