We've only had this little gizmo for one day but so far it has shredded 1 and a half moving boxes full of paper creating five garbage bags of shreds. Sure it does heat up and shut down to save itself from self destruction when you use it too long but that's exactly what you want it to do. We're talking about a $30 paper shredder from Fry's not an industrial rock crusher. This thing really kicks. Hint: We used quite a bit of oil to keep it going. I hear that vegetable oil works as well as the store bought stuff that is also vegetable oil...but don't know if there are any drawbacks to using cooking oil.