Prolonged High Temperatures Bad for Processor?

No. The cooling in your laptop is sufficient to keep your processor within its acceptable operating range. Even if it did come close to overheating, the processor is designed to throttle (slow) itself in order to reduce heat output.

 

What's ideal temperature for the processor. Its operating parameters as it were.

 

It's safe up to 212 F.

 

I fry eggs on my PowerMac's cpu's but the prospect of writhing in agony from a blown coolant line doesn't appeal much to me.

 

I had a friend with a first gen Dell XPS and the thing used to idle at 90c. When it would hit full load it would just pass 100. Although 80c is high, they are made to work at about that temperature. Now if my desktop ever went over 40c I would be concerned...