Serious Issues with Powerbook

My computer is less than reliable and it doesn't seem to be something the average mac user puts up with. I'm on my second unreliable apple computer.

I have a 12" 867 mhz G4 Powerbook, its a fine computer for my needs, Dreamweaver/ Photoshop Elements at max ....

so my computer has always had this problem for as long as I can remember but it freezes all the sudden and stops responding. The only action is to hold down my power key and restart it, very very annoying. So I've always thought it was something with the operating system, something in panther that was doing it. And then I got 10.3.5 and it had like a crazy up time for a month with no freezes. I then updated on accident at some point and the crashes started again. I tried to reinstall 10.3.5 and nothing helps, I keep getting these freezes / crashes sometimes multiple times per day.

So I've done a lot of research on this issue and my first attempt was to reinstall panther, that didn't help. My next thought was the RAM. I bought ram from Coast2Coast (18004memory.com), its a 512MB stick. Well I bought that about a year ago, so my memories of the system before then aren't clear but this has been an on going situation. So I read up and decided this sounded liek bad RAM, so I give them a call and say yeah my RAM doesn't work, can you replace it under warranty, and they do. I went back to the stock configuration of 128 soldered and 128 installed (Its samsung RAM that came stock). Over that period I had one or two crashes at most, I only remember one for certain. Well I got the replacement piece and I was psyched. I installed it, and everything booted up fine. Since i've had the RAM, which arrived on Monday, I've probably had 10+ crashes
I had three yesterday while playing a movie in quicktime, for a few minutes I thought that was the culprit and then switched to VLC. Crashed again. Today I was working in Dreamweaver and it crashed.

So am I right to think that the RAM is causing this problem?
Any experience with Coast2Coast, any chance they'll give me a refund or partial refund for my memory?
I know many people here are big fans of companies like Crucial, and I would buy from them in retrospect ( and will if i get a refund or partial refund) but I was never sure if thats legit or if it was brand elitism... I'm starting to see theres more truth there I hope.
$100 is a big bite for a student with no income until I go job hunting in a week or two. Any tips on getting the moeny for the old RAM refunded so I can buy a more respectable branded piece?

 

Yes, you would think so, but the hardware test CD isn't guaranteed to work on my computer

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25415

Weird thing is, that it runs with the stock config but not with the newly added mem BUT and this is a big BUT it sounds like the random error generated by this CD ....

so I ran memtest from macupdate, it found no errors on either piece, and I ran TechTool Pro 4 , it also found no errors.

 

fixed by a newhard drive

 

fixed by applecare