I think the second one is really the answer. Cheap laptops of the day had a lot of tolerance for the housing that lead into the port so if your weekend misangled you'd fit it pass the chassis but hit the edges of the PCB recepticle. I think new decides tend to have a rounded lip or some mating feature between the chassis and the PCB mounted recepticle so it's less of an issue. Higher end models often only have the tongue as part of the PCB leaving the outer bit to the chassis.