Although one of the coolest running laptops Apple has shipped to date, a number of users are reporting that their MacBook Air notebooks are overheating under some circumstances, creating situations that leads to freezes in the operating system.

According to the guys at MacFixIt, the following reports have been sighted on Apple's discussion boards:

"I have a stock Macbook Air 1.6ghz with the hard drive and I'm on my second machine. Both have done the same thing leading me to believe there is a serious defect in the Macbook Air. What happens is that after about a half hour of using the machine and running it with some apps like Parallels, video, whatever, it will get really hot. Especially in the upper left region of the computer. It feels hot to the point that you can't really hold on to it as it's too uncomfortable.

as well as:

"iStat claims the case temperature is: 108 degrees fahrenheit. This is prior to it getting really slow and crashing, since I can't really get to iStat when that happens anyway. The whole process of the Macbook Air getting to this point seems to correlate with using the disk and pushing the CPU. What always seems to be true is that the upper left region of the base of the computer is really hot."

Other symptoms of MacBook Air overheating apparently include erratic trackpad behavior with the cursor jumping around the screen.

The article mentions a variety of fixes and changes in laptop use routine to help avoid the problem such as the following:

-Avoid soft, pillowy surfaces If you are experiencing similar issues, try placing your MacBook Air on a hard, cool surface like a desk. Overheating and associated freezes are more likely to occur if the system is being used on a pillow, blanket, or some other soft, insulating surface.

-Apply the SMC update Make sure you have applied the MacBook Air SMC Update 1.0.

-Look into a cooling pad product as a short-term solution to the problem.

-Though warranty-violating, you might want to look into having the amount of thermal grease inside the MacBook Air reduced. This can lead to overheating, but is a tedious, dangerous procedure to undertake if not completely confident in your abilities to do so.

If problems persist, don't hesitate to take your MacBook Air in for service.

If you've seen these problems on your end or found a good workaround or solution to your MacBook Air's overheating, let us know over in the comments or forums.