  We present a numerical study for different discretisations of the static
action, concerning cut-off effects and the growth of statistical errors with
Euclidean time. An error reduction by an order of magnitude can be obtained
with respect to the Eichten-Hill action, for time separations beyond 1.3 fm,
keeping discretization errors small. The best actions lead to a big improvement
on the precision of the quark mass Mb and F_Bs in the static approximation.
