Evidently, the issue with something on the hardware of that HP 
consumer laptop preventing the SL7.2 live KDE  boot DVD from running may 
be correct.  The live DVD iso
worked on a Dell Latitude E5550, followed by a full install from the 7.2 
4 Gbyte install DVD iso.  As a consumer laptop, Dell did not put a DVD 
reader/burner on this
model and one is not available.  Using dd, I put each of the above 
mentioned 7.2 iso images on USB stick flash drives, and did the 
testing/install from there.  No issues,
everything works.  In the future, for problem cases, I will use Ubuntu 
LTS -- but as I have all of the applications, etc., already configured 
for SL 7, it was easier for me not
to have to "support" fundamentally different distros (e.g., yum for one, 
apt-get for the other).  I do want to thank all who assisted with this 
issue, including a detailed discussion
(off list) about Ubuntu LTS.  In that regard, having checked other 
comments on the web, it does appear that Ubuntu LTS is as "production" 
"hardened" as the EL family, and in
some ways is easier to maintain, there being no need to find multiple 
repositories to get the various development tools and applications as 
does EL (e.g. EPEL, ElRepo. etc.).

Yasha Karant