MacBook Pro owner Alfredo Melloni maintains his two-month-old 15in-screen notebook runs so hot it has burned his hands. He's posted piccies of his poached palms on the web and claims to have had the alleged injury verified by his doctor.

Here are the shots, but you can see full-size versions here and here. Melloni made his complaint on Apple's online forum here. He also emailed Reg Hardware.

Now, it's well known that Apple laptops run hotter than many other models. They have for some time, presumably in a bid to reduce fan noise. I use a MacBook Pro and have done since I upgraded from a 12in PowerBook G4 in May this year.

Yes, it gets hot. But no, it's never caused me any pain, let alone any marks. I like to think that if it got hot enough to do so, I'd leave the thing alone.

Did his MacBook Pro burn Melloni? It's impossible to say one way or the other without first examining his hands and the machine in the circumstances under which the alleged injury occurred. For what it's worth, while my palms regularly rest on the machine, the upper portion of my palm - the area between the fingers and what some folk call the Heart Line - ever touches the machine as Melloni's appears to, if the pink blotches seen in the pics are indeed something to do with the computer. But that's my hands, not his.

Either way, Melloni thinks he has a case to answer and is "waiting to talk also with my lawyer to take an action against apple".

His claims come as a number of MacBook owners are considering a class action lawsuit against Apple to seek a solution for the random shutdown they claim their machines suffer from. according to an InfromationWeek report. Apple has already told users who experience such problems to contact its customer care service. ®