It runs very cool. It came with a 12 cell battery, so the back actually sticks up about 2 inches. That allows for air circulation... It also gives the laptop a nice tilt when typing. We are actually thinking about getting my wife one to replace her laptop. Her HP is about 4 to 5 years old and is starting to so signs of being tired. Her computer gets super hot and sounds like yours Vaughan. I am running Dimes and Whatpulse on that machine only. I had to stop running CPU intensive programs cause it would literally bog down the machine and make it unusable. Crazy thing is, it was $1300 when I bought it and it was top of the line. Laptops have come a long way since 1.6 centrino's with 512 MB of RAM.