A multitude of problems: dying for no reason, no backup for restoration...

Question

Exactly what it says. I've only had the 2nd generation since August, but it's been a hassle just keeping the thing alive and working. Most of the time (let's say 75%), it runs as it sound; for the rest of the while, it'll often die despite the fact that it's half, or even fully-charged. Sometimes it'll stop working when it's in active use--again, just out of the blue. And you'd think that if I pressed the button, an image of an empty battery or an image depicting a cable to iTunes would show up--and sometimes it does, but for the most part, I can't get a response out of it. When it magically revives, it either reboots or "wakes" from sleep mode, even if I didn't leave it in sleep mode. (Actually, it's died several times when I put it in sleep mode for a few minutes, sometimes seconds.)
Most of the time, I'm forced to hook it up to my laptop and wait for anything between a few minutes to a few hours for my computer and my Touch to register that it's being charged (or rebooted). There have been times when my laptop will pop up with a message saying that there's an "unknown device" attached or that the USB port isn't working; waiting a long while and repeatedly attaching and detaching the cable finally gets it going.
Right now, my Touch is currently in restore mode for absolutely no reason--it just killed itself after being in sleep for a few minutes, and when I attached it to my laptop, iTunes came up saying that my Touch needed to be restored.
Now, with the restores--iTunes 8 won't let me backup my Touch--it has the default settings restore and one from December 23, but despite later attempts, there simply isn't the "backup" option when I right-click on the Touch icon on the iTunes window.
And when I had no choice but to restore to the December 23 backup, iTunes bypassed that and put it back on factory settings, meaning that I'm having to sync everything all over again >( ARGH.
Unrelated, but why will iTunes register some Asian characters and not others? It makes Japanese/Chinese symbols in the song names turn into hieroglyphs. Is it Vista (since it happens on Vista despite all efforts to figure out what's going wrong with the OS DX)?
Now I'm having a hard time getting it just to sync certain files and not my entire library headdesk.
Any help?
Ciao.

Answer 1

Oh, and other details (if this helps):
I bought it new from eBay (yes...but it was brand new and factory-sealed from a reputable dealer). I've been trying to get to the seller (he's contacted me by email before D:) for a receipt (why didn't I just ask him to send it with in the first place?) but I can't get hold of him (just tried sending another about an hour ago), so I won't be able to discuss repairs with the Apple crew or inquire about a replacement or their policies ...
Um. Is there anything else that might help...?