I've seen "mouse" orbital sanders fairly cheap and are good for flat surfaces with extra details.

I have a Black & Decker mouse and am pretty happy with it; it's easy to control with my small hands, for one. A big job will wear through the sandpaper attachments (precut to the shape of the mouse) pretty quickly, but it does the job.

My previous experience in sanding is all manual - sandpaper on a grip, basically - and the Mouse is easier on the hands than that, definitely. If you are used to fancier sanding equipment, I don't know how it would compare,

Would anyone be able to recommend a power sander for refinishing furniture?

I use a palm sander a lot for furniture. With fine sandpaper, you can just take down the grain between coats of finish. The advantage of a palm sander is that it's very gradual and doesn't go round and round, so the potential for damage is much less. I've had ones from Sears and Black & Decker and haven't seen much difference, except that they use different tricky ways to hold on the sandpaper. Getting one with a dust bag is totally worth it.

I have a Black & Decker mouse too, and it's a good tool, but I mainly use it to get into small spaces.

You want the one card because it's better

How?

I don't know, that's what the tivo people told me.

I haven't seen a downside to having two, so I wondered.

In my never-ending quest to no-really-seriously get a new cell phone, I may have narrowed it down to two choices.

One involves buying an LG Rumor 2. The other involves buying a Sidekick. The Sidekick is significantly more expensive. Is there anything that really makes it worth it?

Ooh! Palm-sized keyboard works like a laptop in your hand

Home theater keyboards continue to evolve, and each iteration seems to get more practical. This 6-inch-wide Rii Mini Wireless Keyboard fits in the palm of your hand, and features handy LED backlit keys for use in darkened environments, rechargeable batteries, and a just-big-enough touchpad. You don't need to point it directly at your computer, because it wirelessly communicates with a USB receiver you plug into the PC. And what's that? A laser pointer? Perhaps that's getting overly helpful, Brando.

Nevertheless, now we're getting somewhere. Keyboards are a must when using a computer in the home theater, and this could be the next incremental improvement. TiVo had the right idea, this week rolling out its new remote with that slide-out keyboard for its Series 4 models. If we could combine that TiVo remote technology with this Rii device, we might be getting close to the perfect PC controller for home theater.

The Sidekick has had some problems lately, so I'm not sure I'd recommend it.

(Problems like all of everyone's personal data being deleted for a week while Microsoft and T-Mobile bickered over who was responsible for the outage.)

Thanks for the sander advice everybody. I'm volunteering to refinish some stuff for my sister-in-law & although I have faith in elbow grease, she likes toys.

I'm volunteering to refinish some stuff for my sister-in-law & although I have faith in elbow grease, she likes toys.

Painted or varnished stuff?