Temperature & Power Consumption

The MacBook Pro, SilverSurfer, is now encased in a plastic shell to protect the fine aluminum exterior from the slings & arrows of the typical laptop's existence. But: will the plastic serve as insulation? Of course it does -- but so much so that the heat generated exceeds the Mac's safe ratings?  Once I started working on this, I realized that temperature is a pretty good stand-in for energy consumption and thus battery life. To track temperatures, I downloaded Temperature Monitor 4.5 software download - Mac OS X - VersionTracker. See the Temperature Monitor: Description page at the author’s site, Marcel Bresink Software-Systeme, for details on their invaluable little free utility. Here’s a some data from Temperature Monitor today: 12:18 PM Start: 3:19 ago, basically 9 AM. Low temp is just under 100 degrees F. on the Graphics Processor Diode, the hottest reading on the computer. Specifically, the GPD starts at 96.8 F and peaks at 177 F! CPU A Temperature Diode (CATD) starts at 77.0 F and peaks at 165.2 F, now at 120.2 F. MacBook Pro SilverSurfer morning temperature readings. I think it was the screen saver using all those cycles. The second-highest peak was when the automated backups kicked in, around noon: some heavy disk work: Time Machine & ChronoSync network backup. But without question, it looks like the screen saver is heating the thing up faster than putting the computer in the microwave (which is, of course, not recommended). I switched to the "Computer Name" screen saver to save processor cycles.