SMART was established for HDD originally but adopted for SSD later. Some values may not be totally relevant these days…but it is the way the drive records errors, temperature, etc compared to a manufacturer determined threshold. The idea is drive would report to OS that it may be failing before a failure happens.

Hoepfully you just happened upon a seller looking to get rid of old components and not a scam.

There is a Linux app like Crystal Disk Mark, called KDiskmark that you can also run for some performance testing. Ifyou’ve connected the ssd to the data/msata interface (rather than using wxtwrnal USB2 adapter), and you get super terrible performance compared to online specs then it could be abused.

Zorin is GNOME based, you should have disks app installed. Open it, find the drive and select it (whether you have sata, usb, nvme) . on the hamburger menu choose the benchmark tool, then try the SMART tool. You will get an idea of the performance and if any smart flags got triggered.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNOME_Disks

Probably a great vehicle. Lightweight, good range, etc

I mean if I was a shitty corporation that wanted to onboard new clients I would do a sweet bait and switch later once they are dependant on the new system… And I don’t just mean Microsoft, it is common now

Or an EV

I would say that depends on why they are asking for help, you have got to get to the root of the issue first.

I got the notice to update to 11 a long time ago, then months later a notice my work laptop did not comply with requirements of TPM, but CPU OK.

For my HP workstation it had TPM 1.x and there was a firmware update that brought chip up to TPM 2.0. After I did that the W11 then said CPU doesn’t pass.

Then recently CPU is fine. LOL

They don’t even know what they want.

For home stuff everything is moved to Linux.

A non enforced requirement sounds like it is not a requirement.