My Introduction
I bought an Apple PowerBook a few years ago. I wanted a computer a little faster with a lot less problems. The the operating system which was installed when I had purchased it was Apples latest OS X 10.3.9. The cpu worked like a charm and it was fast. I would say at least sixteen times faster than my last computer. It came with an ATI 9700 with a 64 Megs Video card. Far more than the 8 Megs of video found in the last computer. A large 80 gig hard drive would take me at least a year to fill with just applications. A super CD and DVD burner and player. I had a mobile editing multi media studio right in my hands.

A couple of weeks ago Apple had released a software update to iTunes. So I upgraded to what ever Apple was offering since it was free. Oops Apple forgot to tell computers users who are using an older operating system not to upload this software. Apple had released OSx 10.4 Tiger. I find if your computer and software are working on your present OS why upgrade. In Apples OSX operating system the user is recommended to go into the disk utility and occasionally repair disk permissions. After upgrading to iTune disk permissions in OSX 10.3.9 was next to impossible with out fudging around with iTunes and I did not want to do this.

I bought Apples latest operating software developed in part for their latest step towards Intel. Their mistake cost me money to upgrade, new anti virus software and countless other programs that used this level of operating system.

Hot Cookie
I did find a benefit by upgrading to the new operating system. Apple had created something called a widget and ran in a program called Dash board. These are small applications which serve usually one purpose and float on your desktop. For example one that came with the operating system is a calender. In the calender is the month (3 ) Date ( 5 ) and the Day ( Sunday ). You can find many more of these widgets on Apples Web site.

While looking around I found a widget that reads the CPU Temperature sensors. It was free so I installed it to my application folder. Was I surprised when I read a temperature of 104 degrees F degrees or 40 C (which it reads both) and climbing. I was in the basement of a house and the room was cold enough to make my hands cold. I started researching the internet to find out what my computers operating temperature normally is. I read many message boards where other users were asking the same questions. The general answer is that CPUs run hot. To this day manufactures have been looking for newer materials to include when designing CPU chip sets. The new Intel Core Duo maybe that answer we the consumer have been waiting for. In the mean time what do we do to keep our laptops and towers cooler. I saw a Toshiba lap top computer with two fans mounted on the base. Compared to the PowerBook G4 with no visual fans, the Toshiba looks big, balky and heavy. There was a fan over the video card, and the CPU- a good idea. The Apple G4 mounts a fan under each speaker grill, both are designed to turn on when temperatures reach 50 degrees celcies.

Toshiba and other computer name brands
Toshiba and other computer name brands, also suffer from mega heated CPU. Many manufactures try to deal with this issue by using fans. Towers and other desk tops suffer from this problem as well. Towers have more space and can use more fans to reduce heat. A friend once told me that he had a faulty fan on a CPU 486. The CPU completely melted itself in a very short time.

Some Suggestions
1. If your computer is acting stranger than normal, and the computer is hot. Place the computer in sleep mode, in some laptop fans will continue to run until a set temperature is reached. If there were no fans operating during the situation, turn off the computer and bring it in for service.

2. In most computer stores you can buy fan plates which sit under the laptop computer. Some come with two fixed fans which receive their power by connecting to a USB port.

3. Reduce the amount of time the computer is on. Set sleep time to come on sooner. For example turn sleep time on after ten minutes of inactivity. When the computer is in sleep mode there is little or no CPU activity. Temperature go down considerably.

4. Some laptops allow for users to select a manual processing power. You can set the CPU to full processing power all the time or a reduced processing level of power. For example a CPU running normally at 1.5 GHz can be set to a reduced processing level of 1.3 GHz. Which reduces out putted heat. Normally by default most computer are set to automatic, where the application being used or how many applications are on at the same time determines the maximum processing power.

5. Work in a cooler location.

6. Go camping and use your laptop as an expensive heater.

7. Do nothing and you might be lucky enough to have your computer last between one to five years. Maybe less?