produce LaTeX documents with regular letter margins

i've never really understood those small default latex margins. perhaps they're for some kind of really small paper. in any case, if you're printing on regular letter-sized paper (8.5 X 11) and don't want to kill so many trees, try the following document settings:

\documentclass[12pt,letterpaper]{article}
\setlength\textwidth{6in}
\setlength\textheight{8in}
\setlength\oddsidemargin{0.25in} % LaTeX adds a default 1in to this!
\setlength\evensidemargin{0.25in}
\setlength\topmargin{-0.0in} % LaTeX adds a default 1in to this!
\setlength\headsep{0in}
\setlength\headheight{0in}
\setlength\footskip{1in}