Fellowes Powershred 99Ci 18-Sheet 100% Jam-Proof Heavy Duty Crosscut Paper Shredder Machine for Office and Home, Black/Gray 3229904

I have had the work horse of a shredder for 4 years now and I have never had 1 single problem. I don't think they make it anymore. I paid $200 for it and it has been an amazing piece of equipment. I got so tired of the cheaper machines that jammed and were basically unusable if you wanted to put 5 sheets in at a time. Think this machine can handle 15 sheets at a time. Excellent, fast, easy to empty. I also ordered a bottle of shredder oil and followed directions once a month to make sure it was oiled properly. Seriously, this might be the last shredder I ever use. A friend's mother died and I told her to bring me the paperwork and I'd shred it for her. So easy and it's kind of fun to just get it done with NO PROBLEMS, no jamming. If it gets hot, it stops and cools off. Noise level is fine. I highly recommend this shredder or the latest version. I wish I had paid $200 10 years ago because I wasted so much money and this shredder it so worth the price.

Before I even get started with the details, I'll just say I put it through 10+ years worth of household use over 4-5 days and this shredder does all that is expected. Highly recommended. Unit arrived within about 2 business days. With Amazon Prime, shipping was free and the size and weight of this unit, though not great, is not it trivial. I had a lot of "stuff" to shred. There were boxes of manila envelopes filled with old bills, cancelled checks and tax returns. Some were from as far back as 1988. I shredded everything up to 2002 or about 15 years worth. The shredder preformed perfectly. I ended up filling 5 yard sized black, plastic bags with packed, shredded paper. Off and on over about 5 days, I spent about 5-6 hours feeding this shredder. At first I was concerned about staples. The owner's manual is pretty small but seems to be all you need. It simply stated to not put large paper clips, plastic (except credit cards and CD,s as instructed), and gummed labels into the shredder. After reading that, I didn't worry about staples any longer. I'm not sure how many I ended up putting through the shredder. Not a lot, but several. It never seemed to notice. One of the common stapled items was check registers and they were shredded as easily as everything else. A few minor inconveniences along the way that are to be expected include the following: Shredded paper builds up in the waste container triggering container full light and stopping the shredder. This is resolved by sliding the container out and packing down the shredded paper, sliding the container back in and continuing. Repeat until the container is full and needs emptying. I was shredding so much the temperature indicator came on. The shredder would stop and would need to sit for 30 minutes to an hour before shredding could continue. This would typically happen while I was in the middle of the SECOND container of continuous shredding. This is not something you are likely to encounter in typical day to day use. If anything, it is good to have safety features like this. Who wants an overheated motor sitting over a basket of combustible, shredded paper? It can be a little messy. Again, no big deal and to be expected. At the end of shredding 1 or 2 containers of paper, I would have a few scraps inside the cabinet, in the waste container that managed to avoid the plastic bag liner, and on the floor. A couple of minutes with a vacuum cleaner fixed that issue. The waste container is about 9 inches wide, 15 inches deep, and 15 inches tall. This is about the size of a good sized office trash can and I assume it will not be hard to find suitable plastic trash bag liners to fit and anyone of a number of stores. A few liners come with the shredder. With a little care, I simply emptied the liner into a larger plastic bag and reused it over and over. There is an electronic touch sensor at the paper feed entrance. If hand or fingers come in contact with any part of the feed slot the shredder stops. This is a nice safety feature, especially if you have nosy little one around the house. The anti-jam feature works well. There is a sequence of lighted LED's from green, to yellow, to red that indicate how much paper you are feeding the shredder. If its green, you and feed more, yellow is about right, and red means you are feeding too much or too thick a stack of paper. There is forward and reverse button that allows you to back up the paper if you put in too much. I found that several times, if the amount of paper was marginally too much, the red LED would light, the shredder would stop for a second, back up a wee bit, then proceed shredding on it own. Occasionally I would have to back it up myself, lighten the load, and proceed. This shredder is rated at 17 sheets. I found that to be sufficient. The majority of bills and bank statements seem to consist of two to five, 8.5 x 11 sheets of paper folded twice to fit in an envelope. The 17 sheets this shredder is rated at handles those folded sheets easily. This is a very nice convenience since you typically do not have to manually unfold the paper before feeding it, especially if you have several to shred. Finally, the instructions say to lubricate the shredding head after you empty each container. A small bottle of oil comes with the shredder. You drizzle a small amount in the opening where you feed paper, and use the forward switch to run the head briefly to lubricate. The instructions say to use vegetable oil so I don't think you need buy anything special. What you have in the kitchen should work fine.

I'm using my new Fellowes Powershred 79Ci cross-cut shredder in my home law office where, on a regular basis, I have a large number of confidential documents that must be shredded. The shredder operates flawlessly rendering the documents into very small unreadable bits of paper. There have been no paper jams. I had no trouble flipping over the protective plastic shield which protects you from sharp CD or credit card shards and shredding a credit card successfully. After shredding the credit card, it was easy to flip the plastic shield back into place to go back to regular paper shredding. I like that there is a rocker switch at the top back of the shredder so I can cut off all power running up to the machine when I am not using it. Otherwise, when I am in my office I leave the rocker switch on and use the power button conveniently located on the top of the machine. I did not install the wheels because the height of the machine without the wheels fits better in my space. As a relatively new user of this shredder, I decided to try using the shredder without the plastic bags and then just dumping the paper shreds into a kitchen-size trash bag. This is not working so well for me. I've failed on several occasions to successfully invert the shredder bin into the kitchen trash bag as the bin is a little awkward to handle. Also, when I pull the bin out to empty it, I find paper shreds that missed the bin or fall to the bottom of the machine outside the bin from the cutters. I now have little shreds all over the carpet. I plan to next try using plastic bags in the bin to see if I can make the shredding process neater. Despite the messiness factor, I would still purchase the Fellowes Powershred 79CI cross-cut shredder because it does such a great job shredding. The shredder is much quieter than my old strip-cut shredder which I greatly appreciate since I am using it at home. My only design-change suggestion would be to locate the alert signals (full bin, temperature, etc) to the area in front of the opening for the cutter blades. When you are inserting paper to be shredded, you cannot easily see that the light for "bin full" comes on because the paper is in the way. However, the assets of this machine greatly outnumber any small inconveniences. I would recommend this shredder to a friend.

*** Update - 7 years later *** Still going strong. The infrared sensor has failed so it keeps running. I have to shut the unit off from the rocker switch in the back. Not that big a deal but not ideal. *** I'd still buy it again. I purchased this shredder 12/2008. There are a lot of reviews already but I thought I could add a few things. A reviewer commented about the mess in the shred bin. Yeah, but it is only a minor problem. All my past shredders were worse. I shredded some CDs and DVDs and they make a mess because of the paint on the non-writable side. If you jar the bin slightly and push the pile down with your hand before pulling the bin out the rest of the way, you can minimize the mess. But with CDs and DVDs, some of the stuff is so light it blows around. Someone commented about the on/off switches. There are two. A master rocker switch in back that I would guess you always leave on. The switch on top you might turn on and off. If you leave the unit on (both switches) all the time, the blue light will run and use a little power. If you really want to be green, I guess you could turn it off. I want to stress what some other reviewers said about this monster. This is by far the best shredder (and most expensive) I've owned. I owned about three el cheapos before. They all burned out. I use this at home and I'm a nut about shredding anything with any personal information on it. So I might use it more than the average household and I can't imagine ever stressing this beast. But I did give it a shot (below). For day-to-day shredding, this thing wouldn't break a sweat. It is almost overkill but I could see this unit lasting years. While vacuuming out the unit after shredding the DVDs, I looked at the business end of the shredder. There is a spindle of nasty looking, sharp metal teeth between plastic guides. The power cord is bent at 90 degrees so the unit will sit closer to the wall. Nice touch that a lot of other manufacturers should do. I had a pile of paper to shred since my last shredder burned out. It sawed through that pile in a few minutes. My old shredder would have loudly churned through the pile in about two hours. I always dreaded shredding before. Now, I'm looking for things to shred. The other thing is, this unit is very quiet. It produces a low hum as opposed to the much higher pitched whine of cheap shredders that beg for mercy if you give them a couple of sheets at a time. The teeth are metal so follow the instructions and oil them. Nuff said. Now for the main selling point. I had about 250 CDs and DVDs (old computer backups). You don't want to just toss your personal data in the trash - you have to shred that stuff. Most reviews of most shredders never mention shredding DVDs which seem a little tougher to me. This unit had no problem with the CDs or DVDs. I shredded them in groups of ten. I oiled the teeth a couple of times during the process. Awesome! I used the guide for the credit cards, CDs and DVDs. I think there are probably tougher teeth in the middle and the guide makes sure the plastics go through in the right path. The auto shutoff works as advertised. The teeth are so far down that I can't see a baby's finger getting in there. There's no way an adult's finger could get in. Maybe Gene Simmon's tongue (Kiss) could get in the slot. :-) Look no further. Buy this shredder.

Just received my new Fellowes 79CI shredder, and only time will allow me to know about its durability. As for the rest of it... The good news: This is very powerful, efficient and quiet shredder that eats up stapled paper quickly and at a very low decibel level. I like the casters on the bottom that allow it roll easily over my hardwood floor; and the unit sits sturdily on top of these wheels. The test will be when/if I try to input paper clips, and then the ultimate test...a Chip Credit Card. Overall I am happy with the initial performance of this machine. The not so good news: My own fault, but this "cross-cut" shredder leaves pieces that are larger than I had in mind. Even larger than my $30 cross-cut shredder that worked for me for nearly 20 years. The size of the shredded paper leads to the basket filling up very quickly, requiring that you either tamp the pile down or discard the contents of the basket. The customer rep at Fellowes told me that the cutters should be oiled each time you discard the waste basket; and that will be a lot of oiling if I follow that advise. As a home user, I think this will work for me. Hopefully the longevity of this unit is better than some of the negative reviews I have seen...although I take Amazon reviews with a grain salt for the most part. One thing rings out, and that is that this shredder is probably about $40-$50 more than it should be given the pros and cons. If it lasts a long time, I would still be quite content with this purchase. If it fails in less than 5 years as some of commented, then Fellowes should have some explaining to do on quality and pricing.

I have had the Fellowes Intellishred PS-79Ci Shredder for one week. I have used it on several occassions for up to 15 minutes of intermittent shredding and it has worked flawlessly. I have shredded up to 12 sheets of paper at one time (shredder works a little harder but still smoothly shreds), a couple of credit cards and approximately 15 CD/DVD disks. The operation with paper and credit cards is surprisingly quiet. You could probably shred with someone sleeping in the next room and not wake them. The noise level (dB) is probably doubled when shredding a computer disk, but it still is quieter than any other shredder I've worked with. One time the shredding process stopped with paper still sticking up above the shredder. I had a pair of 8-10 bank checks, side by side, so that a total of 16-20 total checks were being shredded at one time. I thought that since the checks took only a fraction of the available space for feeding in paper that I could shred two stacks at one time. Well, the shredder stopped. I pressed the reverse button for a couple of seconds, then the forward button until all the checks were gobbled up. No further misfires since then, even doing the same thing again with checks. Everything functions as Fellowes states. I was pleasantly surprised to receive a small bottle of oil and several clear waste bags. The bags work great. The operating manual is brief but answers some essential questions like what to do with shredding malfunctions, what not to shred, how long to shred and maintenance. While Fellowes tells you when to oil (at every waste bag exchange), Fellowes could have detailed exactly how to use their oil. Hopefully Fellowes technical support will be helpful when a question arises. Shredded material size is as stated and is the same for paper as well as computer discs and credit cards. There are units with more finely shredded material, and there are many units that do not shred as small. A motivated thief with patience and plenty of time could reconstruct most any retail shredder's output. That said, a thief would most likely dumpster dive for someone else's unshredded documents before sifting through your well shredded ones. Overall, I feel reasonably comfortable with the level of security of the shredded material with this unit. The construction and design appear to be of excellent quality with appropriate ruggedness. There is no bowing or undue flexibility of the frame when the drawer is out as has been commented on with the Fellowes Powershred PS-77Cs Shredder. The castors are resonably medium duty and can lock down to keep the unit from rolling away. The shredder without the castors sits flat and stable. Would be nice to know about the quality of the internal parts. I have read that some machines use plastic toothed gears which have higher/earlier failure rates than metal ones. At least this shredder has a two year warranty for the entire unit, which is twice many competing machines. Overall, the PS-79Ci shredder is an excellent unit, working exactly as advertised. The Fellowes website has a nice multimedia presentation on the operations of this unit, including the noise level. I haven't had this unit for very long but I am extremely pleased so far with its performance and fit and finish. I would recommend it to anyone looking for a light to medium duty shredder for home or home-office, especially if they want a longer warranty, low noise operation, very good build quality and plenty of whistles and bells that actually are useful and work.

This is one tough shredder. I took it out of the box and promptly shredded 5 years' worth of paper in two days; I figure at least a thousand pages plus staples, paper clips (accidentally), credit cards and CDs. I hit the hi temp cutout twice and just let it calm down for a few hours. Worked perfectly. It's a bit louder than I imagined but I think I'm too picky. This is a very good product at a great Amazon price with no shipping charge. All good. I've never used a shredder that didn't have it's problems with changing bags (I NEVER save files at work, everything is shredded as soon as I'm done with it so I have changed a few bags in my life). The first thing I did was ignore the instructions and FORGET paying for those special bags and the oil! I took the bag frame out and just let the shreds go directly into the collector. I set up an el-cheapo green trash bag in the shipping box. When the collector filled up, I poured the contents into the trash bag and what little spilled was caught by the box. Works great, no torn bags, no outrageous cost. Any large cardboard box that's tall and fairly narrow will work. I had read the reviews here before I bought the shredder and I saw the back-and-forth about the cutter oil. I'm no rocket scientist but under no conditions would I ever put a vegetable oil on machinery that will get hot - the oil HAS to break down and become gummy. Maybe I'm too tough on the machine but that's me. So, I sprayed the rollers with that old standby WD40. While it's too early to tell whether it will work in the long term, I can tell you that I've used WD40 for over 10 years on a small desk top shredder that has absolutely been abused and the little booger just keeps on working. Hope this helps! This is an addendum. I just helped one of our folks fix a jam on a small Fellowes at work. They hadn't emptied the box in FOREVER and it took us quite a while to clean it out. The shreds were packed SOLID on the underside of the cutters. Cleaned that out and fired right back up. Gotta love these things. This one at work is OLD and abused. ___________________________________________________________ It's been over two years now and although I admit that I'm not running a commercial enterprise, this is one tough shredder. I tend to be careful about letting the thermal overload protection kick in but there are just times when I have a bunch of stuff that needs to be cleared out of a year's worth of filing. Last January, I retired and cleaned out my files in one shot by putting the shredder on top of 2x4s over a BIG trash can. It was a bit cold in the garage so I let the whole mechanism cool down to about 50* and started shredding the pile. Dumped all the trash right into the trash can and the relatively low temperature kept the shredder running for the duration. I was done in record time. I now shred EVERYTHING. VERY happy with this purchase. I especially like how it will back up when it's overfilled and then just grind away 'till the stuff is gone.

Best shredder I have owned to date. Sturdily built and nice and quiet. Really like the wheels making it easy to move from place to place. Good instructions on oiling the cutting blades for extention of the life of the shredder. However, I still have my staff limit the number of pages they can shred at one time as that has always been the death of all my previous shredders no matter how old they were.