Being Shocked/Broken USB/Turbon fan and powerbook

Question

I have a 12" powerbook G4 - 867 mhz operating the most 10.4.2, 40 gigs, and 1.12 GB ram.
I bought this from an apple store in April 2003, shortly after they came out. In October, the hard drive became corrupted and Apple replaced it, but I lost all my data. This happened again in December. Then, I decided to up my ram from 256MB to 640MB using memory from apple (I foolishly bought it from them spending a lot of inheritance on it - something I thought would be a good value). Next September (2004), my hard drive became corrupted again and apple replaced the hard drive, but very unwillingly. When they received the powerbook it had the wrong hard drive in it, one not supported by apple. Since I don't know how to even open the powerbook, I was perplexed by the whole matter. After three hours on the phone, I got them to fix the problem. Turns out it was a service center that apple no longer works with that changed the hard drive.
Recently (a few months ago) my powerbook has been acting up. It gets incredibly hot (58 degrees Celsius) even with the fan on (I actually posted something like this in March or so). I don't run any huge programs, though I usually have itunes and adium always open. I think that because the fan was constantly on, the fan may have broken somewhat and the fan now makes a rattling sound whenever it's on, making a really annoying noise that can be heard by people I'm talking on the phone with. I couldn't quite figure out why it got so hot. I even bought a fan that goes underneath the computer to cool it down, and while this works, the fan comes on eventually, still making the annoying sound. I investigated this by looking at activity monitor and couldn't figure it out. The processor rarely ventured above 30% of it's power. I backed up my things, did a clean install, reinstalled everything one by one until the computer made the noises it did. It didn't take me long to do that, as just turning the computer on forced the fan to turn on and not work so well. Whenever I took it to the apple store it was too loud in the store to hear the fans so they looked at me like I was crazy. So I wanted to give up on them and figured this was just another corporation trying to screw the little guy. It annoyed me, but I got on with my life.
Randomly, about two months ago one of the USB ports started to work only occasionally, and according to my friend who is somewhat of a computer geek, it was not providing enough power to my devices. I figured I would take it to the apple store once I got home from school for fall break (I live two blocks from an apple store at home).
Then I decided to upgrade the memory on my computer about three weeks ago. Although apple officially only supports 640 MB for this model of powerbook, I had heard that it could take an additional gig and upgraded. It works(ed) fine. I'm able to run more programs at once, but the computer still gets really hot. Still, the CPU is only working about 30%.
Then I realized that I should probably try it under a new user. I created a new user account, but still both problems persisted.
So then last night, I noticed that the left shell of my powerbook was giving me an electric shock. It went away when I unplugged the powerbook, but came back as I plugged it back in. (kinda weird though, being that the shell is made of aluminum) It didn't hurt, but after using my computer it was making my hand rather sore, kinda like if I had been lifting something all day. I figured that this couldn't be good, so I shut the book off and figured I would go to the apple store today because I came home today.
Well, when I got home I set up an appointment to meet at the "genius bar". When I got there I explained the history of my powerbook and the problems I had been having recently. When he got onto my computer he noticed that I had 1.12 gigs on my computer. Immediately he told me that he could do nothing unless I put in the original 256 MB that were in the powerbook w

Answer 1

USB 2.0 hubs and devices increase the PB's fan activity. For connecting low speed devices, use a 1.1 hub. If you need an external hard disk, better choose a Firewire or a Combo drive.