EDIT: This is not intended as a shameless plug for Lenovo, I just have so many false touches with trackpads, and I wish eraser sticks were more common, outside of a diminishing percent of Lenovo and a small percent of Dells.
What’s extra weird is that the first TrackPoint laptops appeared more than 20 years ago, so any IBM/Lenovo patents on the technology must have expired by now...
Also third party TrackPoints don’t have that magical touch, they’re hard or slippery or drifting more often or combinations of them. Some UMPC models from Sony, Fujitsu, OQO, Palm ARM laptop prototype had it I think, recently GPD had it.
With trackpad being a requirement, rationale for having redundant pointing device is weak I imagine.
I used to love these, but with my last 2 X1 Carbons from Lenovo, I could not get the mouse to move fast enough in Ubuntu, even with all settings maxed out. I've since moved back to using trackpads.
Newer ones use shorter stick portion and reportedly they are heavier that’s true