Aluminum Macbook, Coolest Yet (Macbook Aluminum Heat Issues)

Using the Aluminum Macbook for over two weeks with a large amount of that time sitting on the couch… I can tell you for sure this is the end of burned, sweaty legs. The Aluminum Macbook runs cooler than any other Macbook or Macbook Pro that I have used, hands down.

I have been on the machine nearly non stop since I got it and I can barely even hear the fan. You have to put your ear against the keyboard to hear it. Right now I am running Ableton Live, with Mail, Safari, iChat, Terminal, XCode, and the iPhone Simulator all open… no heat.. no stutter.. zip zero zilch. It is WAY cooler than my EEEPC, extremely cooler than my Compaq and still much cooler than my Macbook Pro and Macbook White.

Here is a shot from the terminal, at usage.

$ sysctl kern.cpu_temp
kern.cpu_temp: 52

Just goes to show it is not just cool, it really is the coolest Macbook yet.

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EDIT:

3 people have written me to say how much cooler the machine is, and 1 person has commented that it runs hot. I have also heard reports of the machines running cooler from friends who own or work on the 15 inch. (You can see the comment below).

I was and have been running it in the Florida and Southern California heat (although granted.. today is colder).

Under normal load the fan does not even kick on, with the laptop on the rug, or sitting on my lap.

Here is what is running:
MAMP (Apache, MySQL, PHP)
Textmate with 2 projects and 4 additional files
Terminal with 2 windows and 7 tabs
2 Safari windows and 36 tabs playing a movie from Vimeo
1 Firefox window and 9 tabs
iChat with 6 conversations
Skype with 2 conversations
XCode with 3 windows
iPhone Simulator
and Mail.app.

The machine is sitting on my lap, the machine is plugged in and at 100% charge. It’s current temp feels cool to the touch and I can’t even hear the fan turning.

$ sysctl kern.cpu_temp
kern.cpu_temp: 45

The commenter complained about Final Cut and iMovie; You do have to remember, crunching video takes quite a bit of processor grunt, and possibly playing .flv videos from badly optimized or badly written flash players may cause the fan to spin up.

If you have problems with heat issues, or the fan..

What apps are you running?
What is the system load?
Do you have enough ram?
Are you running Universal Binary version of the apps?
Have you checked to see if there is a hung process that is spooling up the cpu?
Do any of your apps have a memory leak?

I am curious to know..