On feeling like a rank amateur

Bertie has a friend called Jo. Jo the bloke, as I call her, because she's into cars, bikes, guns and fighting. Jo has a laptop, an Acer Aspire laptop from about 5 years ago, and it was very very ill. I said I'd have a look at it, and get it running nicely.
I spent nearly 5 hours on Wednesday, checking, optimizing, removing, cleaning up and generally making the laptop better. But I wasn't happy, because Windows was irreparably damaged, and things just wouldn't work properly. I said at the time "It's not right, I'd like you to see how you get on with it, and if needs be, I'll back it all up, wipe it and start again."
Needs be.
So, after being given a second chance to prove I'm no rank amateur, I did this on Saturday. I backed it all up, wiped it, reinstalled everything, and it was running well. A lot better then it had previously. I had one concern however. It kept just turning off during the windows reinstall. I thought that perhaps the power supply was playing up, but it was OK. I thought the battery was playing up, so I removed it. That seemed to fix it, so I carried on regardless. All was hunkydory, except it was running a little "warm" (82c, or a lot in Fahrenheit). I explained this when a grateful Jo (the bloke) returned on Saturday evening to collect it, and that maybe if needs be in time it'll need to be ventilated some other way, or I could improve the cooling.
Needs be.
Now I know that my Acer Aspire is also susceptible to overheating. I tackle this in two ways. I have set up a program called Notebook Hardware control, which allows you to slow down the CPU thus meaning less work, and in turn less heat. I also removed the heatsink and fan, cleaned off the existing thermal paste, and then replaced it with nice fresh new stuff. It still runs hotter then I'd like but 55c is better then 85c. A quick scan of forums here and here seem to also show that it's a common problem with this particular laptop, but poor Jo still thinks this new bloke that claims to know about PCs and laptops might as well be a monkey with a spanner and a hammer. It doesn't make me look or feel any good, and the frustration shows. One thing that is good about it however is if she took it to anyone else, they'd just say that it's knackered and she'd need a new one. I won't. I will win, as always.