Suggestions to deal with Laptop overheating

[OldHardware]

I have a rather old laptop which runs puppylinux off usb and has no harddrive. With 2 programs running, SeaMonkey (essentially Firefox) and Psensor (a hardware temperature sensor for linux) this thing is clocking in at a range of 83 ± 5 °C. I have two tabs open in SeaMonkey, on hulu.com and one tomshardware.com. I assume the temperature is an issue, and am wondering what people here suggest to possibly clean or fix the machine? The fan goes on, but it is obviously not very effective. The laptop is elevated about an inch off of a table and the room is average room-temp.

 

[lightsong]

"rather old laptop"... when was the last time you took it apart and blew out all the dust?

 

[geo337]

you can try changing the thermal paste ( I have a dell inspiron n5110 famous with heating problems) my temps went down by more than 10C after applying antec formula 7 (just applied it today ) although I would think twice as it is a bit expensive for an old laptop.