Static or singleton for clipboard handling

Question

Hi Everyone,
I have the below class with static methods for handling the system clipboard in my small application. I've read that when there is a state maintained I should prefer singleton over static methods. So I guess, I should make this class a singleton because of the Clipboard object in it.
Could someone maybe explain it a little bit what is behind this advice and why would it be better in this case ? What situation can occur when these static methods are not good but the singleton would be?
I suppose these methods won't need to be polymorphic in the future, so that's probably not a factor.
Thanks for any comments in advance,
lemonboston
public class ClipboardAction {
     private static Clipboard clipboard;
     static {
          clipboard = Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit().getSystemClipboard();
     public static String getText() {
          try {
               Transferable trans = clipboard.getContents(null);
               return (String) trans.getTransferData(DataFlavor.stringFlavor);
          } catch (UnsupportedFlavorException e) {
               JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null,
                         "Not text on Clipboard. Try again.");
               return "";
          } catch (IOException e) {
               JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null,
                                   "Something happened when trying to access clipboard. (IOException)\nTry again.");
               return "";
     public static void clear(){
          StringSelection data = new StringSelection("");
          clipboard.setContents(data, null);
     public static void setText(String text){
          StringSelection data = new StringSelection(text);
          clipboard.setContents(data, null);
}

Answer 1

Thank you guys for the comments. So what is the solution now? :)
If I understand it correctly there is one vote for static, one for singleton and one for none.
EJP, do you mean that there is no need to keep a clipboard reference variable? So instead of this in my class:
private static Clipboard clipboard;
     static {
          clipboard = Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit().getSystemClipboard();
     }I could use this?:
private static Clipboard clipboard(){
          return Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit().getSystemClipboard();
     }I don't know what is 'cache' exactly but isn't this system Clipboard (singleton) object there anyway, and I just create a reference for it, which I guess doesn't take too much system resource? Based on this I don't see a big difference in solutions above.
Or did you mean something else? (probably.. :) )
Thanks in advance for any further help with this.