Righto. Thank your roomie for her efforts. It looks like I’ll be going for the custom cut. I’m thinking I should get a few reams to offset the cutting fee but I can’t see myself using even half a ream over my lifetime. Maybe what I really need is a guillotine.
If by that you mean a paper cutter, and you only need a few dozen sheets, then that is really the sensible way to go. And no need to buy one. Schools, offices, churches all seem to have them that you can freely use if you belong there, and at least here in the States, copy centers like Kinko’s have them in their self-service areas. Or you can buy a rotary version at any scrapbooking store or crafts store.
It might be a long-shot, but you could head over to a frequent flyer message board and ask if anyone going from the US to Adelaide would be willing to be a courier.
FlyerTalk is the biggest.
Australian Frequent Flyer is more Oz-centric.
That sounds like an idea!
Wow, didn’t know that! Alas, the nearest to me is over an hour and 1/2 away, though there’s always mail order, although I go for more practical amounts (reams) the same as the OP is for his/her US sizes.
Anyway, I’m relocating to the UK (not just for the A4, of course. I also want a steady supply of Love Hearts.)
An Australian dollar is roughly worth the same as a US dollar. I don’t know what typical wages are like for unskilled labor in Australia, but I find it hard to believe you couldn’t find some kid (your own, one of your cow-orkers’) who would cut some sheets of paper down to 8.5 x 11 for you for less than $35.
IME, A4 paper isn’t hard to get in the States. YMMV.
Getting US letter paper overseas is a trickier proposition. An American military base or diplomatic outpost might have some. How you could make those contacts I dunno.
http://www.fedex.com/Dropoff/LocationEntry.do
Fedex Office Print and Ship Centers? The LAX zip code is 90045.
I’m a little surprised by the cutting cost, but then again I usually order paper in a little larger quantity so straightforward cuts usually are free. You might want to contact some smaller local print shops. They will often have common paper on hand and the cutting takes almost zero time to do. I’ve picked up offcuts from a larger job before by offering beer.
US letter and paper sizes are different? You learn something new every day. Does anyone who uses both have a personal preference or is it all the same thing?
Do they work the same way as A3, A4, A5 etc? Because knowing other non-metric measurements I imagine they could be pretty arbitrary.
No, compared to international standards, US paper sizes are pretty hopeless. US letter is 11" x 8.5". Which is irritating in the OP’s case because this size is shorter, but fatter than A4 (IIRC) so you can’t cut your own from sheets of A4.
Not just the US, mind you, Wikipedia says the following countries use it: United States, Canada, Mexico, Bolivia, Colombia, Venezuela, the Philippines, and Chile
Not that it matters at all, but I don’t understand why you need US Letter in particular rather than A4. If it was just to fit inside some arbitrary container, can’t it be folded?
Here’s a really really really long shot. Googling “8.5x11 paper Australia” one of the hits was a Xerox copier company. Most of the descriptions mention that the copiers handle that size paper. Perhaps you could contact them and see if THEY might know if/where people in Australia are obtaining that size paper?
It’s to fit a particular size of binder, it needs to match the size of the other couple of hundred pages that are already in there.
voguevixen, it’s a good thought, but all copiers in Aus handle US Letter because they’re the same product that is sold in the US.
I’ll just see if I can get a reasonable guillotine for less than the quoted cutting cost and cut my own.
Is it an American binder? I ordered teaching pack from the States once and not only wouldn’t the paper fit into a European binder, it was too wide, but the pages were punched with three holes, not four. I had to beg an American binder from a colleague!
The OP has already given his reason, but I’ll give you mine: we had a US subsidiary, and a big expensive printer in our UK office. It made financial sense for us to produce collateral in the UK and send it over with our staff when they were going to the US office. But you simply can’t insist on international standards when dealing with marketing materials in the US, for reasons that people want what they’re familiar with, and also in the hope that one’s collateral may get filed away by a prospect - in which case we had to conform to the US’s standard. It was a big PiTA.
Just to be clear, “letter” size is what we call the most common paper size, 8.5 x 11".
There is also:
Legal = 8.5 x 14" (a taller version of letter)
Tabloid = 11 x 17" (two letter pages side by side)
Annoying as hell, really, and just one more reason we need to move to metric.
ETA: In case it wasn’t obvious, the quotation symbol ( " ) means inches.
It is several binders from an American company (Jeppesen) who provide aeronautical information to flight crews. There is an Australian provider of the same info who use metric paper but Jeppesen are the preferred option. The Jeppesen binders actually take statement or half letter paper, i.e, 5.5" x 8.5", but some of the larger charts are on full sized Letter paper folded to fit the binder. I’ve recently started using the electronic version of the “Jepps” in an effort to reduce the amount of crap I carry around, the idea being that I only print the charts I actually use. Jeppesen provides its own blank paper in Letter size with perforations through the centre so you can tear than up and make Statement size or you can use the full size. Unfortunately the centre join is weak and tears easily, so I’d prefer to just use ordinary paper for the rare occasion when I need to print a large chart. It is possibly more hassle than it is worth though.
Singapore Post has a service where you can buy stuff from US/UK/Japan, ship it to their address in the country, and they’ll ship it to Singapore/Australia/some other countries for you. https://www.vpostasia.com/home.html
I used this to buy a Lung Flute and a pair of UGG boots. Warning - they charge by volumetric weight or normal weight, whichever’s higher.