Whether or not to change stock thermal paste on early 2009 unibody 17" MBP CPU?

Question

I have a first generation (early 2009) unibody 17" MBP, now out of warranty / Apple Care. It's been working fine in general, however I've been increasingly concerned about the CPU temps when I encode with Hand Brake, and some times when doing things in VMWare (Win XP) and in OS X at the same time. Under those two sets of circumstances, my CPU temp (as read out by iStat Menus 3) routinely hits 100 C. (I've never seen it hotter than 102 - 103, it'll hang around 100 for a while, then eventually cool down to mid 90's as a new equilibrium seems to be reached. Will hang there until the processor intensive task is done, then quickly cool off.) Generally idles in the 40's.
I've looked and looked, and found no reassuring consensus on whether or not changing the stock Apple glob of thermal grease for a thin application of Arctic Silver will help this situation. I've found as many no's as yes's on the matter, and about as many different views on the details of MBP cooling as posters expressing them.
So, what I'm really looking for is whether or not anyone's collected a lot of data points on the subject, and can paint any sort of trend based upon a large denominator of users reporting their experiences. I did find links to a website that apparently did this in 2005, or thereabouts, but all those links are dead, and that was well before the dawn of the unibody anyway.
Was wondering if anyone knew of a source of knowledge on this issue that draws from more than educated hypothesis, or one's own experiences.
I'm already planning on routinely jacking up the fan speeds when doing these CPU heavy tasks, and I elevate the computer off the table to help with ventilation. Also, I've seen several people say that the CPU was made to handle these temps, however, I looked at the Intel data sheets on these processors (<http://download.intel.com/design/mobile/datashts/32012001.pdf>, page 102), and the max tjunction temp is 105C, which I'm getting awfully close to whenever I encode.
Thank you!
early 2009 17" MBP (very good condition)
2.93 Core 2 Duo
8 GB RAM
750 GB HD
latest Lion

Answer 1

I say go for it. About a year ago I had to replace the fan system on my old Dell i8200. To do that I had to take the complete system apart. So while I had everything out of the case, laying there in pieces/parts (including taking the heatsink system completely off the CPU/GPU) I cleaned everything and applied Arctic Silver to both CPU/GPU. System ran cooler then the first day I took it out of the box new.
Personally I would disregard the comment above. Yes you can use WAY to Much thermal paste but if you cover the complete CPU with a thin even layer (even if it is a little to much) it will still work fine, as long as you move the heatsink around when resetting it to even it all out.
From reports from other Mac users, the one that have Baked there logic boards to fix the 2008 NVidia problem that Apple refuses to stand up for, that when they took there systems apart there was thermal paste everywhere. Clearly Apple assemblers think that if a little is good a whole bunch is better. Which isn't the case. But what do they care. The assemblers need something like Macdonald's has for dispensing Ketchup. One squirt and you always get the same amount.
Go For It.
Good Luck.