Do you tell your Family/Friends not to rest there laptop on there lap?

1) Wear longer pants, it's soon going to be winter anyway.
2) Get a cooling mat for your laptop.
3) As a bonus, you get a tan without having to go outside!
4) Besides, if you use a laptop that long you should just get a desktop anyway.
5) If it's getting up to 50 degrees on the surface, there's a problem anyway.

Actually I use to do it and one of my friends said to stop doing for another reason that for the sake of misinterpretation not going to say it. But as for the news article it did happen to me @ UNIV. I placed the laptop on my lap cuz I was in an aisle in the engineering building and I had no place to put it, well I was wearing long pants and the heat still reached my legs it didn't matter at first but as the heat got stronger I placed away the laptop, when I checked my leg area that got hit by the heat was burning red! :/

I tell them not to buy a laptop if they're not going to be using it at their home primarily, because desktops are generally faster, and they run cooler. If you want a mobile device to do most of the functions when you are away from your desktop, they should get something like an iPod Touch.

No. I used my laptop 5+ hours a day while wearing shorts for weeks, and I never got any kind of rash. Or a drop in my sperm count, as allegedly it can cause infertility.

I would, though not only for the health issues noted in the BBC article, but also as the processor fan of the laptops I've used has taken air in from the bottom and ejected it out of the back or sides. Block the bottom intake vent with clothing or soft furnishings, and the fan struggles to keep the processor cool.

Personally, I use a laptop lap rest like the "CushTop" from Belkin available from Amazon (USA) and here for UK readers. It keeps the laptop off my legs, the slot in the middle has good space for cables (webcam, power lead, etc...)

It inclines the laptop at a slight angle, which improves the ergonomics of using the laptop keyboard. I tend to sit with my elbows down quite far; the angle of the lap rest fits with the advice in this article to keep your forearm in the same plane as the keyboard.

Although the lap rest has a fabric top, the laptop stays up off the fabric naturally on it's own small feet to ensure good airflow underneath it.

Where laptop? Where lap? Ugh. Why we talk this way?

Maybe this explain-um somewhat: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63pjK_bIgD0