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By Jasmine D’Katz
During the October meeting, our presenter talked ment in any meaningful way.
about the paperless office and scanning documents
into a digital file, after which, shredding those which What will you shred?
may have personal information on them. More and Basic paper shredders deal with paper alone, but
more privacy is becoming the primary concern of many mid-range and high-end home shredders can
many individuals. Any document, even junk mail also tackle items such as credit cards and CDs.
can contain enough information to allow unscrupu- Some of these use special attachments for dealing
lous opportunist an opening to inconvenience or with plastics, and only cut them into thin strips. The
damage your life. Paper shredders are essential best models will micro-cut or cross-cut them.
appliance that have become staples in most homes.
How much will you shred at once?
When considering a paper shredder, you want one Luckily for anyone who has to shred a lot of paper in
that offers a cross-cut or micro-cut for the best pro- one go, shredders process more than one sheet of
tection. If you need to shred credit cards or CDs, paper at a time. The amount of sheets a paper
you will need to be sure the model you pick has that shredder can deal with is referred to as "sheets per
ability. A shredder that is easy to use, has overload pass."
protection, and can shred a number of pages at Smaller models may only be able to take on two to
once at an acceptable speed is what we recom- four sheets per pass, whereas more hardcore mod-
mend. els can tackle 20 or more sheets per pass.
For a larger list of desirable features, continue read-
ing. If you're ready to start protecting your family
and your business right now, consider one of the
models that we've evaluated and determined to be Audio Conversion Software
the best on the market.
By Jasmine D’Katz
Types of Paper Shredders
In October I attended a Workshop to learn how to
Strip cut convert my old records to digital MP3 files at the As-
Strip cut shredders slice paper into long, straight pen Drive Library & Cook Park Library. We used Vi-
shreds. While this does offer some degree of secu- nylStudio software by AlpineSoft which I downloaded
rity, it's not too hard for someone to reassemble from Download.com. VinylStudio is a fully featured
shredded documents, recovering the data. program which allows me to convert my records and
More thorough types of paper shredder have made tapes to CD, MP3 and other formats. The program is
this variety all but obsolete. very easy to use and has sound cleaning filters to
help you rescue damaged recording. I was told it
Cross-cut or diamond cut was easier to use that the more popular Garage
Cross-cut or diamond cut shredders cut paper Band and Audacity. Like the other software, it will
crossways, as well as lengthwise. look up track listing and album art on the internet to
This results in much smaller chunks that would be match you recording. The cleanup option will remove
too tricky to reassemble for all but the most deter- clicks, hiss, hum and rumble, and those scratches
mined of criminals. we may have in some of our old records. Upon com-
Micro-cut pletion, I had to option to burn to a CD, but I’ve got a
If you want the gold standard of paper shredder, opt separate media hard drive where I store all my mu-
for a micro-cut shredder. sic, but if you wish, they can also be copied to my
This masticates paper into tiny, confetti-like chips, MP3 player or iOS devices. The software is FREE to
making it virtually impossible to reassemble a docu- try but is limited to 5-records after which there’s a
$29.50 purchase price.
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