Surprisingly though, people actually DO run software on their laptops.  The program I pointed to manages threads and cpu usage.  You set min and max CPU percentage, threads, even targeted hash-rate.  All designed so that the n00b isn't going to cook their chip.  Believe me, when it comes to keeping chips cool, I know what I'm talking about.  As for mining, most people do it just for fun, just to get a piece of coin to play with and practice trading.  Actually, after looking at the numbers at present, MAGI is just a bit too unprofitable.  Now here's an interesting coin...

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=778322.0

Now here's the thing... As you can see by buddy's numbers there, 7 Kh/s/thread, GPU's usually  hash around 500-1000 times as fast as CPU's, give or take an order of magnitude but who's counting.  Now although there are GPU implementations of the Quark algo, GPU programs are only about ten times as fast.  That kind of even things up a bit.  I don't think anybody can fool themselves into thinking they're doing this for the money, unless they've got a huge farm or something.  We all know it's for pennies, but it's fun, and edumacational.