I think HP Laptop is a lemon, would Edge, Firefox, or Chrome help it?

New, no good...back to HP...still has issues...call on phone, HP does remote "fixes", still lots of issues.
I often get "IE is not responding", HP said go to one of those others because "IE is no longer supported by msoft".

About 2 1/2 minutes to start, re-start takes a minute.....Longer. Then often wait while the homepage fills in. HP says that's "normal for a standard (not solid-state) hard drive". Freezes, freezes during startup. Keystrokes wont appear when typing. This is tip of iceberg, sorry to say I'm probably out $600, as the hammer is coming out soon, just too much aggravation.

Had Comcast here, both inside and outside a few times, checking/fixing/replacing.
But....as I said, is it worth a shot in the dark to try a different browser?

It never hurts to try a different browser, but have you tried a clean install on the system? I worked for HP for a few years and still buy their laptops personally. The first thing I do is back up the SWSETUP directory and then make recovery discs. Once that's done, I wipe the drive and install a clean version of the OS.

..............But....as I said, is it worth a shot in the dark to try a different browser? .............................

Why not just try it and see for yourself.
Others will say " this works for me ", " That works for me ".
Those are irrelevant. The only thing that matters is whether it works for your, and the only way to find out is to try it.
Please bear in mind that IE may not be the culprit. There could be something else that causes the problem.

When it came back from HP, this is what it said:

REPAIRED: (The problem was duplicated during full diagnostics)
That makes it sound like I had one problem, I sent along a list of 19 issues....the ones I remembered to write down and keep track of when they happened.

CABLES: Cable Defective (To Any Internal Component): Replaced Defective Cables
POWER SUPPLY: Electrical Failure: Replaced Power Supply
SOFTWARE: Corrupt OS: Reload Operating System from Media
KEYBOARD: Key Not Responding: Replaced Keyboard

Many of same issues still, and even same day after telephone/remote diagnostics after that.

I think I'm at the end of my rope on this, can't take it any more. Was....literally....going to bring it in the garage and just take a hammer to it and trash it...er...recycle it, of course. But, I'm gonna give it to nephew to do with it what he wants, he's kind of a semi-techie type, maybe things will somehow work out better for him with things I just cannot figure out.

On that note, any recommendations based on experiences, for a different brand laptop? I know, bad things can happen to any of them. Good customer service, easy user-friendly manuals....anything, start somewhere besides reading reviews on Amazon.

You have too many problems in your laptop!

The best bet is take it to a local PC repair shop and let them help you!
Tell them it is under warranty so they can work with HP to resolve the issues.
You may very well have a lemon!

Decided, for now, to go back to using crappy (which was why I bought new one) previous laptop. I felt a calm come over me knowing this ordeal is over, even though I lost.

I've never tried a regular cable type connection, want to see how that is. Is it an Ethernet cable or a USB cable that I use to connect the laptop to the router? Maximum length before it might decrease performance?

It is an ethernet cable, and the length depends a lot on the cable itself, but anything under 100 ft should be fine on any type of ethernet cable.

so many possible causes there,

It has been my experience that windows computer problems break down into the following categories, hardware, software, internet or a combination thereof.

I would be really interested in taking a look at your setup, which I can do remotely.... if interested give me a shout

snoopy51 said:

You have too many problems in your laptop!

The best bet is take it to a local PC repair shop and let them help you!
Tell them it is under warranty so they can work with HP to resolve the issues.
You may very well have a lemon!

To ImLost,
The above suggestion given by snoopy51 is the best approach under the circumstances.
If the cost of repair is too much, perhaps it's best to buy a new one from a reputable retail store.
You probably do have a "lemon".