Question about AMD notebooks

I just got a new Acer Aspire 1300, powered by a AMD Athon 1400+ processor. Although I am pleased with my purchase, I am a little worried about some heating concerns. A friend of mine told me that I should never get a AMD notebook because of AMD overheating problems. The truth is that when doing small tasks, like word processing, it says very cold, but I guess it is because it stays a at low clock rate. But when I run a high demanding task, like a 3D game, it warms up very quicky, and stay a lot hot, even in a short 10 minutes session. The fans are working fine (the air is coming out very hot) but even the case stays hot.
So I am worried about it, with the notebook have a temperature alarm or not, that will prevent any damage caused by the heat.
I would like to ask the people here if it is normal to a modern laptop to warm up this way, and if there is no risk to the processor or the battery. I can return it until friday if I want to. This notebook is intend to be mainly a word processor for my wife, not my primary gaming source (but it will be nice if I can run some games on it).
Sorry if my question is a strange one. Although I am familiar with notebooks at office I usually only run low demanding task on it (no office gaming ...).
Thanks for your answer.

It is nothing to worry about. All modern laptops seem run pretty hot compared to their older counterparts unfourtunatly. (A lot of wasted battery energy there) Even my Toshiba 2210XCDS which only has a celeron 500Mhz gets very hot when running at max. I would not worry about yours at all. And as the other guy said Mobile Athlons run cooler than an equilivent P4-M anyway. And all the laptops I have seen turn themselves off if they do happen to get too hot anyway.
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