Personally I have an older Toshiba that, under Linux, has nice manual
fan and power control, so I can run it in slower-and-silent mode even on
mains. I'd actually be very interested in knowing if the mac laptops
have this (and if you can manually turn the fan on if you wish to keep
the laptop cooler than it does normally).

Nope. Because I imagine that most users are really concerned about the speed of their laptop's fan.

I can see the online discussions now: Should my fan be on 3100 or 4500 RPM?
Or: I forgot to turn my fan on and my laptop got really hot and no longer works... Help!

Have fun,
Shay
--
=========================== Shay  Telfer ================================
 Perth, Western Australia   Technomancer  Join Team Sungroper in the
 Opinions for hire              [POQ]     2005 World Solar Challenge
 http://public.xdi.org/=Shay    fnord     <http://sungroper.asn.au/>