Tennis elbow vs tetanus

Okay, I admit it. The Mean Green Girl just hasn't felt like writing lately. But I don't want to lose my readers due to a lack of content so I'll just schlog through it and hopefully the muse will hit me again soon.

Readers? Oh you poor delusional soul.

::glares:: One of these days I will find you and then bang, zoom, straight to the moon!

Anyways, I thought I would get back to writing with a product review. Because I end up stapling 2-3 sheets of paper together quite often at work I decided to buy myself a staple free stapler. (This model to be exact.) Unfortunately I was unable to find a model that was made in the US but I was able to buy it at a local retailer located within walking distance of my office.

There are a number of reasons I dislike traditional staples. Mainly they are made mostly of virgin steel and are not collected for recycling due to their small size. There is also the getting stabbed in the thumb if they come lose or the ripping of pages when they don't want to come out. Basically, as far as I am concerned, staples and I are not friends and never will be.

So the way a staple free stapler works is it cuts out a notch in the paper and then threads it through a slit (as demonstrated here). I found that this model handles 2-3 sheets quite well and can do four though it doesn't always complete the threading action. The paper holds well for normal use but will fall apart if it gets flung around too much.

On the con side the design is not good for repetitive uses. I do budget work once a month which involves stapling about 400 sets of two pages and after using this for a full day my elbow is swollen and hurts like a grumble grumble grumble. Also it is very hard to tell where exactly the staple will go which sucks when you're having to deal with punched paper.

Overall, I think this is a good addition to any desk for periodic use though I wouldn't throw away the old traditional stapler. I give this three out of five trees.