I'm Hungry For Paper!!

A man working late one night walks over to the shredder to find the CEO trying to figure out how to use it. He offers help and the CEO gladly accepts. He shows the CEO how to turn it on, and then slips the 10 page document into the shredder. Down they go. Then the CEO says, "Thanks, I need 10 copies please."

Although the CEO probably wouldn't have found his situation humorous, anytime I see a shredder I can't help but remember this little joke. The unfortunate part is that it is has probably actually happened.

We had the Intimus 402 where I worked for a while, and it was definitely used a lot. Especially when it came time for monthly reports and billing. If you made mistakes when you printed something out, you couldn't just throw these documents into the regular trash. After all, they had customers names, phone numbers, addresses, and other important information.

So this shredder was used quite often. It wasn't anything spectacular, it ate most of what it was given, but did have a few problems getting stuck.

Adding paper is easy, there is a slot that can hold around 20 pieces of paper. We tried not to do more than a dozen at a time though, because sometimes it would get slow or jammed if it had been working for a long time. You could add paper that was as wide as about 9" so it took almost anything we had.

We did find that you couldn't run it for more than about 20 minutes at a time without it getting overheated. But that seems to be the case with a few other shredders I have dealt with also.

The size of this shredder is small enough that it can be put in a corner and not take up too much space. You'll need about a foot and a half area of space. It is about 30" high so if you are standing or sitting it is at a good height. It has an internal bagging compartment which is nice because if you are not using it there isn't a lot of shredded paper on the floor around it.

For those of you who are looking at a shredder for security purposes, the strips that come out are 1/4". Small enough that it would take a person a long time to attempt to put them back together.

Overall, this is a pretty good paper shredder. It is not heavy duty and not intended for full time use. But if you have occasional shredding needs it should work just fine.

Always remember though, if you get a paper jam in a shredder, ALWAYS unplug it before attempting to remove the jam.