Hi!

In general, while elevated temperatures will (thermodynamically)
reduce the lifetime of the chips in your computer, you may not notice
it in the 3-5 year lifespan of a typical computer.

I'm still running some 386 and 486 class machines and they do distributed
computing projects (in their own admittedly little way). I don't imagine
they saw that kind of use when new, but some have been running for the past
four years almost nonstop and there are no significant problems. I also have
a lot of Pentium 1 through 3 machines that have been running much the same
way.

Laptops, on the other hand, don't have the best cooling in the world,
and (given the investment) I'd never run a laptop at 100% CPU 24x7.
You're better off economically buying a $350 Dell desktop just for
Seti@Home and extending the life of your laptop, IMHO.

I don't know how much of a problem that will be. The battery charging seems
to be the biggest deal...some machines just can't do it while the CPU is
pegged and the display is on. I've had a Compaq LTE 5000 (150MHz) notebook
running distributed.net since I got it in 2001, and during some of that time
it had very subpar cooling because the fan was almost worn out. To this day
it still runs like new. It looks like the backlighting will be what ends up
killing it--it's getting rather weak and shifting color when cold.

William