15" Powerbook G4 Screen is.. dim. Really dim.

I think my backlight went out?

I restarted and nothing. Still dim. I can barely, barely see things like if I hit expose, I can see shifting rectangles.

Also, I've been having this issue where the keyboard mostly stopped working -- if I hit kjjh, it'll come up as 3443 or something. It's usually fixed with a restart.

I have it covered by a year of applecare until feb 24, 2007 -- but I haven't registered it yet. Should I register and then call apple or what?

This comes at a REALLY bad time. I have design projects coming up everywhere and of course, despite my $250 external hard drive, i haven't been backing things up because I'm an idiot.

Can I hook it up to a external monitor just to make a backup of my hard drive?

thanks guys.

I just finished backing up my hard drive onto my external and I registered -- it's still covered under the one year applecare. Now I'm heading to the local shop that specializes in Apple Computers.. I called and they said they can fix it under the warrenty for me, so I'm hopeful.