Cooling help, alternatives to fans

My laptop for some reason is constantly overheated, especially during summer, during an average summer day it gets a core temp of about 120-142 degrees (F). So far I've tried a few things, none of which work consistently. One thing that has a moderate affect, but not for long, is a improvised icetray with a thick plastic cover (laptop on top to prevent water damage), unfortunately my laptop is a widescreen and the icetray is small and circular (covers about 70% of the base).

External fan coolers at best will cool it down 20 degrees, which means its still consistently about 20-40 degrees overheated (my aim is to cool the core to at most 80 degrees). Unfortunately after a few days of looking around, retail, I've only been able to find fan based stands and a exhaust vents extensions.

If anyone has any suggestions on products or improvised devices to keep laptops cool, please share

This is my system: http://support.gateway.com/support [...] &refresh=1
I'm fairly sure the warranty is past, the system is about 3years old.

I'm not concerned with portability. as long as I can get it to cool down. Underclocking is something I'd like to avoid, its already too low to be of much use (1 core, 1.86 ghz).

I started looking for arctic silver, and found that the company also makes "ceramique", is arctic silver better?

Just cleaned out the vent, now core temp is hovering around 125F. It also seems like my laptop came with a layer of arctic silver.

edit: one more thing, I noticed that the cpu fan isn't running most of the time. Is there a way to control it?

I already use speedfan, it works on my pc but not on my laptop and theres nothing in the bios.

How do I check idle cpu cycles?

The "system idle process" seems to be around 80-90 on average.

Also, yesterday I wanted to check my system with cpuz and and apparently the clockspeed actually fluctuates between .7ghz and 1.8ghz.