***!?! (lid-closed operation)

I have just bought a powerbook and being the nerd I am have been tooling around with stuff on it for about a week. One of the main things I was looking forward to was hooking it up to a nice stereo, closing the lid of the beautiful thing and admiring it's usefulness/compactness (it doesn't seem to be as impressive when it NEEDS to stay open to play music through a stereo). I know for a fact that it CAN run closed, it just needs a display to do so.

So this is what's messing with my head. On one hand, Apple supposedly doesn't recommend operating the powerbook closed because it hampers heat dissipation. That's why, in order to do something like this you need to download a third party program (SleepLess) that may or may not damage your powerbook. On the other hand it's totally fine to run it closed so long as a display is attached to it? How is this possible? I mean running a display takes power, resources, which translates to hot hot processor. So why the **** can't I run itunes while the thing is closed with REDUCED CPU power with the monitor off?

WHAT'S GOING ON HERE?!?!

whoa there hang on, why would a normal person want their powerbook to run with the display closed. Exactly they wouldnt, running it with the lid closed is fine as its the iBook that dissipates heat through the keyboard.

if the little app you have does the job you need it to then fine dont worry about it, just change the power options to reduced before you close the lid, a little clumsy i know but its a work around for now aint it?

There's a lot of misinformation on this.

It's perfectly safe to do this with a PowerBook; It's not safe with an iBook. The iBook can't dissipate heat through the thick plastic case when closed. Both models will automatically sleep when closed, but a PowerBook will wake up if a USB (or Bluetooth) device is connected.

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=86286
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=88199

thankyou

The replies were much appreciated.

Thanks