In all honesty, I have stopped recommending the K46CB already, since Haswell models are beginning to show up. Look for Acer V5-473PG which vents air to the back that meant better cooling compared to the side venting of the K46CB.

Plus the V5's memory upgrade is much easier than the K46CB.

Every laptop, from Acer to Apple if you want to think about it, has heat problems, namely on how best to actually remove said heat. There is nothing to say that Asus is hotter than Acer or Lenovo is hotter than Apple.

I bet that if your friends all use Asus they would point out that it also have heat problems.

In the case of K46CB vs the Acer V5-473PG the difference happens to be how the hot air is vented out. The K46CB vents out the heat from both CPU and GPU to the left side of the laptop running under the keyboard, and with your arm placement you would actually feel the heat. It is the same with the Y400/Y410P from Lenovo, again venting out hot air to the left of the notebook.

The V5 vents out hot air via the back. Hence the better cooling feeling as one would say.

Strange. Mind passing me the models and the specs of the Acer that has such a problem? Because I haven't encountered such problems, since, well, a long time. Most modern CPU's now have thermal throttles, dating back to I think 2005. Too hot, and the CPU throttles down to keep temps down.

They use to make programs to stop throttling behaviours.