As most readers probably know, laptops are often subject to manual scrutiny. From my non-representative sample, about four out of five tote bags clearly containing laptops will be manually searched. Typically, the attendant requires that the laptop is powered up. In none of the 20+ manual searches I witnessed did the security personnel wait past the RAM check before clearing the passenger. I could not help but contemplate how much of the insides of the laptop could be replaced while still obtaining an identical display.

Almost all of them. I saw the keyboard of an IBM thinkpad flipped up at a party the other day and was flabbergasted. It's all empty space! You can add & remove innards all you want. Disk drives, batteries, etc. are all removable. The actual computer itself is so tiny I couldn't believe it. You could pull out the CD-rom, floppy disk, spare battery, etc. and have a nearly empty box that still runs windows and unix.