Cutting to the Chase About the Fellowes PS80C-2 Shredder
by
quasar
,
in Magazine Subscriptions, Restaurants & Gourmet, Books at Epinions.com
,
May 7, 2005
Pros:
does cut paper into fairly small pieces when it works, handles staples (sort of)
Cons:
pulls paper unevenly, papers can get stuck and unsticking them gets messy, awkward height
The Bottom Line:
There are other shredders that work well and aren't as temperamental as the Fellowes PS80C-2. Use one of them instead.
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Overall Rating:
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Author's Review
I've never been one to feel like every personal document needs to be shredded, nor has shredding paper ever been a big part of my job. Thus I've not been more than a very casual user of paper shredders. This led me to erroneously believe that, give or take a few bells and whistles, all shredders were the same. Not so.
This little truth became apparent the first time I tried to use the Fellowes PS80C-2 shredder. Instead of greedily consuming the four pages I tried to feed it (well within the supposed ten page maximum), the shredder took a taste, burped, and stubbornly refused to take any more. Unfortunately it didn't want to yield the papers back, either. They were stuck.
Eventually, I noticed a rocker switch on top of the shredder and flipped it. My partially shredded papers came spewing back at me, along with a cloud of confetti-sized paper pieces. What a mess! I was able to shred the rest of those papers once I flipped them over and switched the shredder back to "suck" mode. I was picking little pieces of paper off my clothing for the rest of the day.
While that was by far my worst experience with the Fellowes PS80C-2, it wasn't my only bad experience. Of the dozen or so times I've used it, only two went smoothly.
The biggest problem is that the shredder doesn't pull paper through evenly. No matter how careful you are about lining things up, by the time your paper is halfway through it's bunched up and tilted. This makes the shredder louder and slower. It can also lead to unexpectedly large pieces of paper; if you have size requirements for your shreds you can't count on always meeting them.
This shredder supposedly handles staples and paperclips, but I've had some problems with stapled material. It chokes if you you try to send through more than three or four stapled pages. If you must send through a stapled document, tear off pages until the stapled section is only a couple of pages. I wouldn't even try to send through paperclips; remove them and just shred the paper itself.
The shredder comes with its own wastebasket, one sized about halfway between the standard cube trashcan and the standard kitchen trashcan. This means that you can't use standard bags in it. It also places the shredder at an awkward height. If you need to bend over to coax some paper through, reverse the direction, or empty the basket you end up at an odd angle. If you have any back problems avoid using this shredder. If you use it frequently, make sure to monitor back pain. I've felt twinges once or twice just from limited use.
If you can make it accept your paper, the Fellowes PS80C-2 generally does a decent job of shredding documents. The resulting pieces are small enough that it would be extremely difficult to reconstruct anything. However, it's just not worth the hassle. There are other shredders that work well and aren't as temperamental as the Fellowes PS80C-2. Use one of them instead.
