As a followup to the last pages discussions, per a suggestion by Salt Peanuts I picked up an Belken AC powered Firewire hub. Unfortunately, this doesn't help us first gen MacBooks owners, as the fan slowly climbs as normal to hold at max. It was worth a try though. Thanks again for the idea SP. Interesting the AC is powering the Duet somewhat as the light comes on on it when plugged into the hub and not the MacBook. However this complicates things further. When then plugging into the MacBook it doesn't 'jumpstart' the Duet. It stays semi-alive (lit up, but not functioning). The Duet must be disconnected/connected between the hub and itself to work normally.
On the positive side of things I also picked up a couple of these Sewell Firewire Extenders. For anyone that needs to move the Duet and extend the digital signal to minimize the analog one, these work quite well. Maybe this will help me in situations where I'm not next to the laptop fans.
And for those wondering, no I didn't use the latter when testing the former.