I think I may have been the first unofficial Thinkpad laptop repair person.
When the Thinkpad 700 came out, I was working for IBM managing the PC side of a regional repair center in SE Michigan. About a month or so before their official release, several IBM exec's had production units, and a few of them were already being dropped or broken. It started with a unit in my region, which I was able to repair, and then word got out that there was an internal employee who could fix these things, and other units started showing up to my attention via FedEx and intercompany mail. One or two via private plane (in those days we had private planes and pilots on call to make high priority parts runs for certain national customers with IBM service contracts).
At the time, the Thinkpad 700 was considered to be a crazy dense and delicate machine to most of the repair guys. Now, you compare it to a modern laptop and it looks absolutely trivial to take it apart.
In the mid-1990s, I bought a used IBM ThinkPad 701 in Hong Kong. Ten years before "netbooks," this wonderful little laptop had a very unique approach to compact size: A "butterfly" keyboard that unfolded when you opened the laptop. There are some photos and historical information about the 701 here:
Supposedly, the design was inspired by a black bento box.
Although primitive by today's standards, it was a solid little laptop that served me well for the tasks I was engaged in at the time -- writing, Web surfing, learning HTML, and playing Doom.
In the late 1990s, I had a house fire. No one was injured, but the butterfly ThinkPad was burned, the exterior case charred and partially melted. There was data on it that I wanted, including a manuscript. I brought it to the local IBM repair center in Taipei. Two young techs were at the service desk, and hardly battered an eye when I took it out of a plastic bag. They got a small electric saw, cut open the case, removed the keyboard, and took out the HD which looked intact. They attempted to connect it to their diagnostic machine but it wouldn't read, unfortunately. But I really respected their attempt.
At the time, the Thinkpad 700 was considered to be a crazy dense and delicate machine to most of the repair guys. Now, you compare it to a modern laptop and it looks absolutely trivial to take it apart.