another heat thread

i am in a market for a new laptop, and since
my college gives me some discount, i went
to a store to check out dell d620 and macbook
pro.
($700-800 discount for dell and $200 for apple)

as i have to use it for coding and word processing
for long hours, the heat and noise are very
important issues when choosing a laptop. (and
the program i write is very cpu and memory intensive)

when i compared those 2 models, i was quite
suprised. macbook pro was hotter obviously (i tried
internet surfing and some editor programs for
around 10 minutes on each machine).
however, i noticed that dell d620 was much hotter
(or warmer) around palmrest and lower keyboard area.
surprisingly MBP wasn't even warm in those areas.
(and those will be the areas your body contacts
your lappy if you put it on the table)

is this what you experience with your macbook pro?
is this also the case when your cpu throttles at 100 percent?

 

For those taks have you thought of using just a MacBook and not a MacBook Pro?

Anyway, back to your question. You have to understand someting, these CoreDuo's are hot. They are touted has being effiecient and cool, which they are for the amount of power they pack, but they are still very hot for a notebook. The bad news is that the Core2Duo's seem to be even hotter from early reviews. The MBP gets a bad rap, I believe, for two reasons. One, they were one of the first CoreDuo's to market and two they have an aluminum case which transfers heat giving the impression that the notebook is running hotter than it really is.

So having said all of that, I think that the processor temps in all CoreDuo's will pretty much be in the 40-50C range, which is well below their max of 100C. Under a load in the MBP it will get more into the 50's and 60's, but still well within operating range and not that much different than every other CoreDuo available. They are packing two 2.0GHz processors on a very small piece of plastic. That is a lot of power in a very small space.

Oh, BTW, I am typing on my MacBook Pro that is in my lap. It is warm but not hot.