This is about the best way I found of being able to monitor the temperature on an HP Elitebook.
http://ynottech.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/ubuntu-1110-setting-up-cpu-temperature.html
When running the ‘sensors-detect’ command I selected all defaults apart from allowing the command to edit the configuration file.
It looks like coretemp-isa-0000 is where the CPU temperatures are shown. I can only get the status bar to show one temperature at a time – but this is sufficient for me to keep an eye on the temperature.