(Primarily for people googling about Thinkpad T60p temperature problems.)
I had some problems earlier this year with my Thinkpad overheating. Under sufficient load for a sufficient time it would just die. A little instrumentation and logging showed that Thermal Zone 1 was reaching its threshold of 96C.
I tried a whole bunch of things to fix it -- at one time Solaris was running on the ultra bay drive, so I figured it was putting out too much heat for its intended use and moved it to the standard bay. No luck.
Hmm... maybe the fans aren't spinning properly, so maybe this shell script that tells the fan to spin all the time will help? Nope. I figured running it in the docking station hurt, so I put it on my iCurve. It helped but would still occasionally die.
For some reason I'd never done the simplest thing possible, blowing compressed air through the vents. I did so a few days ago and the machine runs at least 15C cooler at all times maxing out at 87C when it's doinog a ton of stuff rather than 95/96, even in the docking station.