The hardware was the size of a candy bar. There was space for a big colorful sticker on the flat side. The insertion force had a very satisfying feeling. The all metal cases made them feel substantial and expensive.
Big, colorful, tactile. They were the vinyl albums of the PC world.
Some details:
https://msfn.org/board/topic/141776-modifying-a-really-old-d...
Of course now it is the USB port that is fragile instead, so when it breaks it requires a full mainboard replacement.
[1] https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0597/9131/1011/products/3C...
For example, instead of sourcing a stock of the increasingly hard to get DDR memory chips, time and money was spent on designing a completely new 3d printer based on new mechanics for printing the laptop parts. No commercial printer was good enough and neither was any 3d printing service.
Due to the time spent on thimgs like this more and more parts went obsolete and manufacturing became harder.
Still waiting for my EOMA68-A20 card that runs Debian.
With USB 3.0+ though, it seems obvious why it may have died out when better connectors became available.
Damn thing can even take a sim card!
And of course there is eSATA on the back as well so you can theoretically have tons of drives running on their native bus.
(I also have a t25 as my main daily work and personal laptop, and couple of other thinkpads in various states of setup :).