Me and the Machine Get Hot
It's summer, it's hot in my room and because the vacation started I'm not in the air conditioned office any more. So the machines have to stand some more heat. Since I'm preparing some stuff and installing some programs on the old PowerBook from my boss, the machine temperature is rising. I noticed the small internal fan spinning on its highest speed, and the lower side of the 'book got really hot. Time for some remedies...
My first line of defense was to put two books underneath the 'puter, so the air can flow underneath and the heat could be transported off a bit better. There are a lot of people who recommend this path of action with a hot laptop.
I believe that giving the laptop a body of mass that carries off the heat more effectively than air would be preferrable. If I had a suitable flat peace of marble around, I'd put that into the fridge and put the laptop on top. (Putting it into the freezer would likely cause trouble because the temperature difference could be too much.)
What I did instead was to pull my air ventilator closer to the table. It's not very confortable to type with the air stream so strong, but it seems it helped the PowerBook to cool down quit a bit. As soon as the installation is finished, the heated up laptop will remind me to take breaks in my hacking projects.