Remember my iBook hard drive issue? I’ve had a feeling since it happened that it was related to heat. I was having some connectivity issues this morning and noticed that the region directly above my keyboard was hot to the touch. I started googling, of course, and ran across this (significantly old, but useful) information.
I ran activity monitor and GmailStatus* was spinning at about 80%, making the iBook crawl along and causing the processor to really heat up. I suspect there’s a bug in GmailStatus that puts it in a tight loop if it has a hard time connecting to gmail for a while.
After closing GmailStatus, the extreme heat dissipated in about ten minutes.
I’ve turned GmailStatus off for now since there’s no telling when it might run into this issue again and I’m trying to be gentle with the iBook.
*I’ve been using GmailStatus over Google’s official notifier because GmailStatus provides the option of reducing the frequency of interruptions, and Google’s does not.