Stay On Track With PaperMate’s Sidetrac Mechanical Pencil
Written: Feb 28 '05
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Extremely comfortable to write with, inexpensive, refillable, huge eraser.
Cons: Might take a little while for some people to get used to it.
The Bottom Line: Love writing with mechanical pencils but hate the hand cramps or sore fingers? Invest in the Sidetrac from PaperMate … your hand and fingers will thank you!
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| Freak369's Full Review: Papermate Sidetrac Mechanical Pencil Blue Barrel .... |
One of my latest finds at Office Depot is the PaperMate Sidetrac Mechanical Pencil. When I saw the aisle chocked full of ‘new item’ stickers I was in my glory. My youngest son and Annabelle were with me and couldn’t resist giggling at me as I oohed and ahhed my way up and down the section. Then I spotted it, a thicker-than-normal mechanical pencil … a huge fat eraser, .5mm lead, side clicker to advance the lead. It was almost too much for me to handle. My son jolted me from euphoria when he elbowed my in the ribs and said “Yeah, yeah, yeah, get one for me and lets go, they have free hot dogs next door”. While the wee people were busy refueling on nacho chips, canned cheese and rather wrinkled looking hot dogs, I was ripping open packages of pens, markers and pencils. Hey, it could be worse, I could be hooked on shoes or purses.
Papermate Sidetrac Mechanical Pencil Blue Barrel .5mm Lead
When I looked at the site to see if this was listed I had to laugh; the picture really doesn’t do it justice. This is a little thicker than normal automatic or mechanical pencils but not so much so that it feels weird when you start to write with it. The rubber comfort grip extended half way up the pencil so no matter how you hold it; you are going to get coverage. The one thing that I love about this is that the clicker to advance the lead is on the side of it and once you get the hang of it you can click it without having to stop and fiddle with it. Since I started to do a lot more design work these days I am always on the look out for a pencil that had a nice firm lead to it and will hold up to my heavy hand. I’m not the gentlest person when it comes to office supplies and pencils seem to feel my wrath when things aren’t going smoothly.
A few days later my son started rooting through my desk drawers for some supplies and spotted a few of these, of course he snagged one and made off with it. He’s got a love / hate relationship with automatic and mechanical pencils. One week he swears them off and drags out the electric pencil sharpener then the next week he is back on them. He liked the way this wrote, the lead advance feature, the cool eraser and the rubber comfort grip. About the only thing he didn’t like about this is that there wasn’t a protective metal sleeve for the lead to come out of. For him this means that he has to ease up a little when he is writing or risk having the lead snap under the pressure.
I started using these when I was working on a black and white sketch for a customer and found that it worked out a lot better than regular sketching pencils. The lead is nice and dark and doesn’t fleck all over the paper and as long as your aren’t a complete ruffian when you are using it, snapping the lead is a rare occurrence. These are refillable but so far I haven’t had to purchase and refill lead for them but it’s nice to know that I can do so when the time comes. Out of curiosity I did check the prices on the refills, the smallest count is twenty pieces of lead for about $1.19. Not bad in my opinion and since the Sidetrac’s are pretty sturdy, chances are you’ll get a lot of wear out of them before you need to replace them. The erasers on the other hand, well, no one seems to know if they are refillable or not, when I called PaperMate about this, no one seemed to know what the deal was with them.
Price
I got this for $1.29, which has to be wrong! I asked several people if the price was correct and they gave me ‘the look’ and said, “if that is what it scans at, then that’s the price”. I started looking online to see what other places were charging for this and ended up more confused than when I started. Some sites sell this by the six pack, others individually. Some sites are selling this for about three dollars for the six pack while others have it listed as an individual item for the same price. Whatever the price, I went back to Office Depot and bought about twenty of these for $1.29 a piece. If they priced them wrong then it’s their fault, not mine. Even if these cost a little more, in my opinion they would be worth it.
The Bottom Line
I won’t say that these are the greatest mechanical pencils on the market but they are a hell of a lot nicer than most. The rubber comfort grip lets you write longer without getting hand cramps or sore fingers, the lead is strong and dark, the eraser is huge and you can purchase refills for these at most major office supply stores. As far as price, well, I got them for $1.29 and if Office Depot suddenly decides to jack up the price on them then I’ll have the last laugh cause I cleaned them out of the ones they had in stock. If you are someone that uses mechanical or automatic pencils but you want something that has a comfort grip to it, this is a great pencil to check out. PaperMate stands behind their products too, if you have any trouble with it, it’s defective or doesn’t perform as well as you hoped, contact them and they will do whatever they can to remedy the situation.
As always, thanks for the read!
~^V^~ Freak ~^V^~
© 2005 Freak369
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Recommended:
Yes
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