I went to replace the TrackPoint cap, and pulled out part of the plastic assembly with it. It's stuck in the cap now.

This is new for me. I regularly swap TrackPoint caps out of my T60 and have never had this happen before.

* Looks for small prying object and superglue. *

Did they change how it attached or did you break it off ?

There's an intermediate piece of plastic now between the root stub and the cap. I'm merely under the assumption that it's not supposed to come off.

Good grief - does that mean the TrackPoint caps have changed to accommodate it?

So you can't pull the cap off anymore? At least, that's the impression I'm getting from this thread. Any updates?

Weird. What kind of nub came on yours? I never replaced the one on my T43p and I think my X31 (which is at home right now) has the same type nub.

My W500 came with multiple caps as always. I'm sure the T500/W500 caps are removable.

Sometimes the plastic "bit" that the TrackPoint sits on, the square bit, comes off with the TrackPoint cap, it's not a defect and it's nothing new, does the same on my T43 which is 3.5 years old, and have seen it / done it on other ThinkPads. I just "squeeze" it out, attach a new cap and press it back onto the KB. Never had a problem.
It might also be KB manufacture dependent? Not sure.

I've seen it happen on my X31. It's definitely nothing new.

I've never had it happen on my x31 or T43p. I think I'm going to play around with it to see if I can reproduce it though.

Good thing it's not new. It never happened on my two previous ThinkPads (T60 and T22).

It's always been that way. If you've used a lot of Thinkpads, you might notice that the Trackpoint “sensitivity" varies between Thinkpads. The Trackpoint plastic part comes off easily for the ones that are more sensitive, and might also be the cause of drifting.