Dust, Electronic Equipment and Heat

>Regarding Michael Havens' question, whether dust in his computer could
cause >it to overheat:
>Curious you should ask. Where I work, the person whose job is to maintain
>our computers recently mentioned to me that 90 percent of problems go away
>when he blows the dust out of a computer.

Here's my anecdote to share... A friend was complaining that her sound card
stopped working. A reboot didn't fix it. I opened the case to find a severe
layer of dirt coating the machine along with some friendly 'dust bunnies'.
The sound card looked brown, instead of green -- no joke. After making a
small sand dune outside, the machine worked much better.

Short answer: Yes, dust can overheat your machine.