I can confirm that this is a 'linux-image-2.6.17-10-386'-only problem. The linux-image-2.6.17-10-generic has no such problem and scales the frequency down to 800MHz and up when needed.
As a side effect the cooling fan is not working so often as earlier, I think it depends on the frequency as well as on temperature. -- speedstep-centrino module fails to load https://launchpad.net/bugs/66812 -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
