SUCCESS! It was a tricky thing to do, but everything worked fine. I agree that you should work slowly and carefully. I managed to not break either bulb (old & new).
The metal "chassis" that holds the lamp is held on with 6 screws, and it does indeed require some force and prying to lift it up. Do this evenly so as not to flex the bulb contained inside. There are 4 visible pieces of tape holding it together. There are also 3 pieces of clear tape down inside the seam at the very bottom edge of the LCD. To cut these, you must lift the metal part up to a 45 degree angle and look down inside where it "hinges" as you lift it up.
Once you get this assembly out, you have to carefully peel a smaller brass colored metal part off, and it is held on with what appears to be a type of rubber cement that doesn't particularly ever dry. After that, you must slightly bend the brass metal apart at each rubber ring that's around the bulb so the bulb will freely come out. Then you can work at the white rubber ends freeing them from the brass part.
Once you get both ends out, you must carefully cut the rubber so that you can take it off and set it aside. Then you must cut off about 1mm of the shrink tubing against the bulb at each end. Then simply heat the exposed wire with a low-heat soldering iron, and the bulb will fall away from the wire due to gravity. Do this to both sides.
Next roll off the 3 clear rubber rings from the old bulb and roll them onto the new bulb. Cut the leads on the new bulb to the right length. Expect the bulb and the small piece of lead to shoot in opposite directions. Cut on a flat surface to the bulb is free to shoot at least a foot across the surface.
Using rosin-core solder, solder the wires onto the new bulb. Note the orientation of the wires, they should come out 90 degrees from each other, not in the same exact direction. Reattach the rubber ends. Straighten out the brass metal as much as possible, this is what leaves bright and dark spots along the bottom. (I need to take mine apart and tweak because I have a slight bright spot where I bent it for the right-most ring.) Reinsert the bulb into this piece of metal. It should be against the bottom of the metal. The rubber at the end with wires coming out should go through the bottom of the metal by a millimeter or two and the other end should be flush.
Reattach the white wire as it was before, it should still stick fine. Reattach the brass metal to the larger piece of metal that is held with 6 screws. It also should still stick. Reinsert the whole thing into the LCD. Apply new tape, I used packaging tape. Screw everything back together.
As you can see there are a lot of very intricate steps in a very small space. This is not a project for everyone!! I know very few people who could do it but I'm sure there are a lot of people here who would have no problem.
