Product: PX100MX Crosscut Shredder (Platinum Series) by Royal

Description: Every office geek needs a shredder! The Royal PX100MX Crosscut Shredder is a cross cut shredder that vertically shreds up to 10 sheets at a time. There's also a separate slot for shredding CDs, DVDs, and credit cards! The unit's paper slot measures 9 inches long, and the CD/DVD slot measures about 5 inches. The shredder sits on top of a 4.22-gallon wastebasket, so you can shred tons of materials before it gets full. Royal strongly recommends to keep paperclips, neckties, body parts, and small children away from the shredder when in use.

How It Works: Plug the shredder in to a nearby outlet. All controls are located on the top of the shredder. Press the ON button to power. Then place the item you wish to shred in the slot, and watch as the shredder goes in to demolition mode. If something gets stuck, you can always use the manual feed buttons, located on the top right of the shredder. When the basket is full, just pull up on the handles to remove the shredder and dispose of the shredded materials. The unit is quite loud while shredding (especially the more sheets you shred at one time), so you may want to shred in the morning or late evening when no one's around in the office.

Performance: The unit shredded 1 sheet at 3.7 seconds, 5 sheets at 4.7 seconds, and 10 sheets at 8.2 seconds. I decided to be bold and try 12 sheets at a time (while crossing my fingers). It succeeded in shredding all 12 pages, but it took more than 10 seconds to shred, and the unit made a noise like fingers on chalk board! It sounded like it wanted to give up. (I should have given it a pep talk before I started!) So, I would definitely stick to the 10-sheet-in-a-single-pass rule. You don't want to upset this shredder!

Let me tell you, the staff here had lots of fun shredding old CDs and DVDs with me! We won't reveal any of the horrible music albums or press release CDs we shredded, but let's just say they're fiesty things! I'd insert a CD and it would sit there for a bit unless you push it through the shredder, which took about 5.9 seconds with the delay. What's cool is that the unit shreds them into three parts! Royal claims in its press release that the PX100MX can shred floppy disks. I'd like to dispute that, because the CD slot is NOT big enough for a floppy disk. Sorry, I tried folks!! VIEW MORE PICS WE TOOK OF THE PX100MX HERE.

Overall: The PX100MX shredder works great for shredding sensitive material and old documents, especially CDs or DVDs you don't want anymore. I highly recommend it for any office geek. However, I have a slight gripe about the design of the unit. There are two handles located on each side of the unit, but you can't use those handles to pick up the unit; the handles are only used in order to lift up the top of the unit to dispose of materials. I don't know how many times I had to watch myself NOT pick up the unit using the handles! So make sure you pick it up by grapping the bottom.

The Royal PX100MX Crosscut Shredder (Platinum Series) retails for $99, but many online retailers are selling it for around $45. Good luck trying to find it though. Most online retailers are out of stock of this item, believe it or not! I'll let you know if I find where it is in stock somewhere.

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Thanks to Blogging Molly & Product Review Coordinator PJ Jacobowitz for contributing shredding material and to Commerce Producer Arielle Rochette for not killing me during the loud shredding process.