Is there anything wrong with taking my ssd with mint out of my desktop and slapping it in an old laptop? I actually tried it and it seems to have booted up perfectly. How does it know what drivers to use automatically? Its pretty sweet that it works this easily.
Most distros use a generic kernel that contains drivers neeeded for basic operation. These kernels are larger than ones specially made for your hardware. Some specialized drivers like graphics may not be included but will run in a more simplified graphics mode that works for all cards.