Thank you all for your encouragement. After Dec 10 I will tackle the problem by installing Xubuntu -- which was my original intention since I had/have it on my laptop.

When you first installed Linux on this computer, was it behaving like this right away or did this run ok and then started messing up as time went by?

It never went smoothly. It used to hang when I was using Libre office. Or when I was using Firefox. Then when I tried to play a DVD with Firefox it hung. It also hangs with the default player. [I wrote in a thread asking for help re DVD] but in the end after trying everything from re-installing, changing to Mate, it still hangs, so I use my laptop with Xubuntu to watch DVDs.
Someone suggested the hardware so I did a hardware check and everything was fine. I am told that the video driver on the CPU has a known flaw [I think I am telling it correctly. I had decided to just limp along with lots of saves but the loss of the email I was writing triggered me to ask if anyone else is having such problems with Mint 18 Sarah.

I currently have Xubuntu installed on my laptop and my PC as a VM. I like the GUI and how it performs. Honestly, If I could install CentOS 6.x on my laptop I def would but CentOS 6.x crashes when I tried to run the installation DVD on my laptop.

if you got VM fix your USB connections and dd it to a USB Stick.. that's be fun to try.

Answer to Hydrurga: Ctrl-Alt-F1 does not work when my system hangs.