[tkmd]

I have an some classic footage on a dvd format that I would like to crunch to h264 using handbrake and my friends MBP. He is very anal about his machine- and I am worried that the heat from encoding will damage his HD - which I will then be responsible for. The reason I ask this is because my 1.5ghz PB was used in the past for this kind of encoding (pinning the CPU for hours) and afterwards my HD was noticeably louder. I know that the first generation of MBP run hot - does anyone with a 1st gen MBP foresee this activity causing HD problems in his machine?

[Eriamjh]

Macbooks are not good for doing real work.

Seriously, do you really think that using the machine like this could break it? That would be one heck of a crappy machine for Apple to sell if it couldn't handle being USED for extended periods of time. Some laptops/computers run stuff like this for days. Just make sure the laptop has good airflow around it and it will be fine.