ronin - 6:26 pm on Feb 4, 2004 (gmt 0)

Otherwise you're looking at losing a lot of money for no good reason.

Yeeesss... but if you hold onto the cheques rather than banking them and you end up holding onto them for a very long time before the exchange rate improves... you might find that you would have been better off to bank at a worse exchange rate and make up the difference in interest.