MacBook -- ouch!

So I picked up a MacBook last night to replace my 12" powerbook, which is nearly three years old. The form factor was basically what I was looking for in a replacement, although it's a solid pound heavier than I was hoping. The battery life is decent so far, but it seems like the machine is faster than the OS X kernel's ability to handle it. Single applications are sometimes plenty fast (when the hell is Firefox going to create a new thread for every tab? Hello?), but switching between applications still seems to take forever. If I keep the machine I'm going to fill it with 2GB of RAM, which should help some, but OS X seems particularly vulnerable to I/O -- I've noticed that if I'm doing anything there, it just grinds to a halt, and I'm usually lucky to even get the spinning beach ball -- often, it just doesn't do anything for a while.

But the biggest summary of the box is "ouch!", since it's been averaging above 70C since I started getting it built this morning (you can use CoreDuoTemp to get temps on these and MacBook Pros -- and speaking of application switching, I use VirtueDesktops, and while running Software Update and switching from my X11 desktop to Firefox, doing a google search, copying the first link, and switching back took about one full minute, nearly all of it sitting and waiting for Firefox or X11 to recover and let me interact with them).

That's just way too hot. I don't know what to do about it; it's obvious that Apple considers it acceptable if your machine burns your lap. I'm thinking of checking out the thermal paste on the box (and potentially voiding my warranty, I guess), but if that's not the problem I don't want to be stuck with a machine that I can barely use -- and this machine's primary use is for my lap when flying or working on my couch or whatever.

Grr. Silent is great, but not when it's at the cost of usability.

And speaking of silent, my fan is on this weird kick where is just speeds up and down constantly, instead of staying at a constant hum. Oh well.

I do like the form factor, other than how sharp the front edge of the palm rest is and how wide the bezel around the screen is.