hey all

I've been on Ubuntu for a couple months now, and love it. I have a few minor issues though.
-when told to "shut down" ubuntu cannot turn my computer off. Randomly it will do a full power down, but more often then not it will shut down the os and halt at a blank screen, and I have to hold the power button down to fully power down.
- My system seems to run really loud on ubuntu, the fans are almost always turning full speed, is there a reason for this? and is there any way to control their speed? Under windows the system runs much quiter, and windows has a much larger hardware footprint.

thanks for your time guys