I have 2 identical laptops, and one is generating much less heat than the other. I looked up the settings and its CPU speed is set to medium, which is the lowest setting. The other'ssetting is at maximum, so I assume this is the cause of the difference in heatgeneration.

Now if I use the laptop just to cruise the web and nothing special, like downloading huge files or calculating, does the medium(slow) setting really count that much?

How much does it slow down the surfing experience? I would rather not overheat the laptop, if it doesn't effect performance much....

Edit: I just did 3 downloadspeed test with the 3 settings, and there was no difference, so I assume for websurfing I can leave it in the lowest setting...

Most of the time on a computer you will be moving the cursor or typing. These are essentially independent of the CPU speed.

I speedtested both laptops. They are exactly the same type and the CPU settings were the same. One had a 10% faster download speed than the other, not sure what is different though.

it may just be the modem/Ethernet circuitry. assuming they use the same exact model of motherboard, there are still variations in the manufacturing that could cause a difference in performance. also, the software, disk fragmentation, disk size, disk speed, ram speed, ect can all have an effect on performance.

One had a 10% faster download speed than the other, not sure what is different though.

Download speeds depend on many factors, such as internet traffic and speed at the source. Unless you did a study with several trials, a 10% difference could be just random.