Buying a Paper Shredder - Useful Tips

Scope of Usage:

Wondering how to get rid of all that unwanted paper lying around in your home? Paper from your kid’s homework, junk mail printouts and the list goes on. The easiest solution is to shred all the unnecessary paper. Shredders today come in different sizes and for various purposes. From personal to industrial uses, shredders offer people with a solution to dispose of important and confidential papers without having the fear of prying eyes scanning your papers.

The first step in determining what type of shredder to buy is to identify the scope of usage. For personal and home office work, a personal shredder will suffice. For industrial purposes and office work you most definitely require an industrial shredder with a higher shred capacity.

Primary differences in shredders:

When choosing a shredder you need to understand approximately how many sheets of paper you will be feeding at any given time. Personal shredders take in about 4 - 6 sheets of paper at a time. If you are planning to use your shredder consistently and also feed in more paper every time, then a higher capacity shredder should be considered over a personal low capacity shredder.

Industrial type shredders range from taking in 12 – 16 sheets of paper and they can be used for sporadic shredding also. Trying to feed in more than the shredder can handle will result in a motor burnout and eventually the need to replace your shredder.

When buying your first shredder, you need to keep in mind two major things;
1)The number of sheets the shredder can handle at any given time
2)The number of time the shredder can be used in a day

Types of Shredders:

Shredders come with different shred types so you can choose one depending on how sensitive your data is. The smaller cut shredders offer the highest protection as it becomes extremely difficult to reconstruct the papers and thus you can prevent your data from potential hackers.

Strip Cut: This is the most basic of shred types. The papers are shred into thin, long strips usually about 1/8th of an inch in width. Also known as Spaghetti cut, these types of shredders are usually used to handle large volume of papers and they take up the least maintenance. The strips might not compress very well in the basket and hence may require frequent emptying.

Cross / Confetti Cut: This type of cut offers higher security than strip cuts. Cross cut shredders cut the paper both horizontally and vertically so that you get small rectangle shaped pieces. The size of the cuts may vary from model to model, while the basic range is from anywhere between 1/8th” x 2” in size. Reconstruction of sensitive data is possible however it would require patience and skill. This type of shredder costs more and also requires higher maintenance. Compression is also better in the collector bin.

Micro Cut: These types of shredders offer the highest security by cutting the paper into very small pieces ranging between 3 mm X 8 mm across. Compression level in the bin is also the highest. The tradeoff however is the cost and the high maintenance requirements.

Summing up:

Shredders can even handle shredding of credit cards while some even come with special provisions to destroy CD’s, DVD’s, Floppy’s and other heavier metals. Additional features like automatic start and stop, paper jam indicator etc are also available. Always make it a practice to shred any paper that contains private or confidential data that is no longer needed. With identity thefts and other security concerns growing by the minute, a high quality paper shredder is exactly what your home or office needs to secure your sensitive data.