It seems my computer is nearly dead

I can get it to start up, but as soon as I open a real program, boom it crashes. So this weekend in between baking holiday cookies I am going to ensure I have copied all my files to the external hard drive. I am 95% sure I have all my photos I just want to check them from Mike's computer, and maybe copy over some of the free digital scrapbooking stuff I haven't copied lately, and check on my music files. You probably won't be seeing any pictures until after the 25th since I would have to set up Mike's computer to download from my camera, work with RAW etc and then do that to the mac two weeks later. Besides I don't think I will have a lot of time to be taking pictures before the 25th anyway so not much of a loss.