The Eddie Van Halen of Paper Shredders April 3, 2012, 6:48 pm The thing that's missing from paper shredders? Celebrity endorsements. Take Fellowes's new 79Ci shredder, which costs $240. For starters, Fellowes could get guitar heroes like Eddie Van Halen or Yngwie Malmsteen to vouch for its superior shredding ability. The 79Ci is also, Fellowes claims, jam proof. Well, I'd like to see Paul Weller or Jimmy Jam put that to the test. Advertising aside, Fellowes's newest consumer model does address some practical issues. Start with that jam-proof technology: What the 79Ci does is try to head off a jam before it happens. It accomplishes this by measuring how much paper is being inserted before it cranks up its jaws of death. If you try to pull a Full Enron (that's shredder-speak for overloading the machine), a green-to-yellow-to-red indicator will tell you if you've exceeded the shredder's capacity, requiring you to reload in more moderate amounts. If you misfeed some paper - insert it at the wrong angle, or folded over - the Fellowes will either step on the turbo boost and power through it, or reverse gears to expel the misfed sheet. Proximity sensors also keep the shredder from operating when fingers are near the paper opening. Once the 79Ci shreds, it doesn't leave paper in easy-to-assemble strips (that's so American-Embassy-in-Tehran-circa-1979). Like many modern shredders, it cross-cuts a single sheet of paper into 399 pieces, making it ridiculously difficult to reassemble. The Fellowes can also shred staples, paper clips, credit cards and DVDs, so while your online data may, from time to time, fall victim to privacy breaches, at least your offline information can be properly destroyed.