Is my Macbook broken?

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Hey.
My Macbook Aluminium 2008 (Bought it in 2010 new from argos refurb) is starting to fail on me.
This is what it used to do during a day of my work (Every day even the weekend):
Have 20 Finder windows open
7 XCode Project Windows open
About 30 Google Chrome Tabs Open
Mail Open
Steam Open (I have an empty account that I use to chat with my friends)
Text Edit Open
Smultron Open
Xampp Open

And its like this 24/7 until I go to bed at 1:30 AM.

I have started giving it allot less use.
My parents have bought me a 2011 iMac which is perfect for this sort of work.
My Macbook apeers to be having problems more and more now.
What it has pretty much always done:
Screen flickering after turning the machine on or waking up from standby or low brightness (This began about 9 months after purchase)
Battery is now completely shot (has been for the past 12 months)
On boot sometimes (very rarely) it will turn on but will not give me a chime and the screen goes blank.
To fix the above problems I need to do this:
Take out the battery.
Boot it again, if it still doesn't work I have to turn it off again and turn it on. Then its fine.

Im not one of those people who is careless with their items.
My Macbook I have taken care of.
I have given it cooling space and everything like that.
It has been everywhere with me these past 16 months. On holidays, on weekend trips. Car trips.
It has been everywhere with me.
When I take it out I make sure its in my hands so it does not get bashed about.
SORRY, I have been rambling.
Anyway, the real problem that I have right now:
When I try to install Kubuntu I get 3 beeps, which means memory failure (Im assuming).

What do you think I can do to fix it?
I sort of need it working as i'm going on holiday soon.
If your wondering why I need it on holiday is because I do work when I go on holiday. (Its not work to me, I love what I do.)
So yeah...
Sorry for rambling!

Barring any of the usual suspects( viruses, shorts, corroded contacts, miscellaneous component failures, loose wires, etc) it sounds like either a motherboard issue or a hard drive issue. if possible swap out the hard drive on the mac( the malfunctioning mac) into a healthy desktop or compatible computer and try to load the suspect drive's systems( OS, loaded programs etc) and if it loads then it is the board that is the problem.if you still have troubles then it is the hard drive that is suspect and at this point your data may either be lost or corrupted. Still salvageable to do the recovery but it may require a specialist and this could end up being very expensive.

IF it is the board, unless you have troubleshooting experience and know how to use a logic probe& oscilloscope I would suggest contacting apple or a good repair company.

as I predominantly work on the hardware aspect of electronics I cannot make very many suggestions on software issues but I believe there are others here who could help with a programming issue.

From personal experience with Macs, that sounds like a faulty logic board (possibly the integrated Power Management Unit). A replacement logic board will not be cheap ($250–$400 US/AU). You can either take it to Apple and get them to do the repairs (they will charge for labour on top of replacement parts), or find a replacement logic board on eBay or a parts supplier and do the repairs yourself. The benefits of letting Apple do the repairs are that you don't have to do any guessing, nor endure the very fiddly process of taking apart a MacBook Pro. I would recommend at least getting a diagnosis/quote from them before proceeding with your own repairs.

Also, is it still under warranty from wherever you purchased it? If so, I would assume they would repair it for free.

I highly doubt this is anything that a permissions repair or replacement hard drive will fix.

(Consider posting your problem on Apple Support Communities for more opinions).

Have you tried fixing permissions with disk utility? This is usually the first thing to try when you have some of the issues you describe with Osx.

You will need to boot Osx from a startup disc/disk to run disk utility on the main partition/disk.

I have a question, Sorta unrelated cuz it has nothing to do with the MacBook but sorta related becausee it does have to do with Apple brand products. Do the iPad 2 and the iPhone 4 have a bridging app that allows you to share files and data like the Blackberry phones and Playbook tablet?