This is probably the 80th time this comparison has been made, just here, on this forum. But I'd like to address this claim in particular as its the one that is unfamiliar:
Why not fix the overheating problem then? Because no such problem existed in the first place.
He wasn't necessarily worried about "overheating", he said it made his "computer run hot" and the fan noise bothered him. He had accrued at least several thousand BTC during his time as a miner... wouldn't that be enough to call it quits on something that really didn't have a lot of utility while he was alive and active?
Regardless, of course overheating was a problem, and it couldn't easily be solved by code changes.
Also make sure your cpu fans are working, your heatsink is actually on, machine is clear of dust, etc or you might overheat.
It would be nice if the next version of Bitcoin had the ability to monitor the temperature of computer components and automatically reduce the number of threads generating bitcoins whenever the temperature reaches dangerous levels. Or even just a scheduler to turn bitcoin generation off during the hot of the day would be great. I recently moved my computer into a closet of a spare bedroom that doesn't get air conditioning and I'm a little worried about the temperature. Perhaps I'll just turn off bitcoin generation until the weather starts to cool down.
Core 2 Quad Extreme Mobile @ 2.53ghz, Gentoo 32bit:
~2000khash/sec...but if the room is hot, the CPU will get up to 95C, it'll throttle and get ~1600khash/sec. I usually run it on 2 cores @ 1.6ghz, for ~630khash/sec
Edit: 2 cores @ 1.6ghz, getting ~1440khash/sec with 0.3.6