I recently got a Dell Inspiron 1525 which I promptly installed Leopard on but I have an issue where it seems very hot to touch and according to Temperature Monitor both of the cores were at 85c idle with the hard drive at 45.

This does have me concerned as I don't want to kill the thing as I have only just got it.

Can someone tell me if this seems a bit excessive?

The laptop was sitting on a table and had nothing blocking the vents.
Here is a pic of temperature monitors history: (It's currently got a large desk fan blowing on it to keep it cooler)

85c on both cores is high, i would be concern as well... its not normal

I don't know if it will help but, we had issues with Compaq c700 laptops with the cpu fan not active cooling. One of the guys named Vanilla put a zip file together that has a power management bundle that fixed our over heating. I DO NOT know what it would do on your Dell, it may fix it, it may brake it, but now you have a link to it.
Hope it helps
Kenny

Thanks for the replies!

I rebooted and was able to use it quite a lot last night and it was averaging 45-50 degrees under light use.
I have no idea why it got so hot before but I'll monitor it to see if it happens again.

Once again, thanks!

My Notebook is a Intelbras N6000W, which have the same barebone of Dell machines.
The problem i faced when install Kalyway hackintosh and update to 10.5.8 was (with a dual boot with Ubuntu 9.04):
- Loading Mac OS X first, the CPU fan don't start and temperature goes fast to 85 degrees, turning the laptop off quickly;
- Loading Ubuntu and restarting the machine to choose Mac OS X lead to CPU fan beginning to work and the temperature hangs on 75 degrees in the worst case (only this way to work on my Leopard)

The solution provided by Vanilla works great. The only problem is that the ApplePS2Controller.kext made my touchpad go crazy, but for me it's not a problem, because i always use USB mouse.

Thanks for share the info!

Besides, here are the necessary kexts for this kind of machine including the Vanilla solution.