Yes. All other things being equal, the hotter a system and its components run, the short its life. While this is not a practical concern at some temperatures, modern-day systems are quite capable of generating enough heat to significantly shorten their lives. See another reply for additional comments.

Personally, I think that something like Fan Control should be part of Mac OS X.

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BTW, on my old PowerBook G4 the excessive heat fried the optical drive connector (it couldn't write DVDs anymore) and the firewire ports. On the new MacBook Pro I always try to keep the temperature as low as possible (reasonably)

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Re: ...the excessive heat fried the optical drive connector...
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Ouch! Must have been "one hot movie" you were watching! <sic>

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