I know that feeling. Recently I bought new ThinkPad T430 (N1T56PB / 2344-56G). Quite expensive, but good stuff.
My previous ThinkPad R61 (NF55WPB) became defunct a few years ago, because of nVidia NVS140m internal chip failure.
a couple of friends of mine also said that you get addicted to that trackpoint, once you are used to it. I don't have one though, but it seems to be like that across multiple types of users and countries as I see :)