Ummm... laptops have had vents on them for quite awhile now and we've all survived alright. If this is your subtle way of saying this isn't an iPad, we knew that already :)
If there are vents you need to keep unobstructed, this has implications for using it in bed, say. I once fried a laptop's graphics card by leaving it on a bed. Modern components should have heat-triggered shutdown mechanisms, but your average consumer is completely ignorant of such things and will think it's broken when it suddenly blacks out.