Strimkind- Thank you for the information. Sounds like a good program to have. The machine is not crashing and has no graphical errors, so I'm glad it is not the thermal paste. Today seems to be a better day, but for a while it seemed like I could use the computer to boil water. I'm curious why you would mention upgrading to 10.5. Is it less resources intensive for a G4 than 10.4.11?

Christopher- Sorry to hear about your external drive. I've started using ATA PC cards to back up data because I'm afraid to use HDs as a sole backup. I'll take a look for older versions to test out the software. I just remembered that when the 12" PowerBooks were released, they had serious heat issues. If they still work, then I guess I can worry less about my 17.