nkedel

Missed this post earlier, but:
A) Broadwell is a dead end; wait for Skylake.
B) There are no quad-core Broadwell ultrabook processors (35/37W quad cores equivalent to the i7-4702HQ/4712HQ)-- the Broadwell quads are full-wattage 47W processors, and will be in 6+lb desktop replacements.)

Also, watch for a Skylake refresh model of that Zenbook UX501 (although the Skylake one may still top out at 16gb; a lot of that kind of thinner Ultrabook or Ultrabook-like form factor machines have copied Apple and gone to soldered memory.)

>[*]i7-5700HQ or better
See above.


>Hardware support/socketing for 32GB RAM (yes, I know selection
>for 16GB SoDIMMs is limited, but I'M Intelligent Memory seems to have
> cracked that nut so others will follow)

DDR3 16GB SO-DIMMs will never be cost-effective; if you want this, you either need a heavy 4-socket system like the Lenovo W540 (they're skipping Broadwell for the W550, and going straight to Skylake-based Xeons) or to get Skylake with DDR4. 16gb DDR4 SO-DIMMs won't be cost-effective out of the gate, but in a year or two, they will be.

See : http://www.slashgear.com/lenovo-p50-...tion-10395905/ -- not clear on whether these are a step up from the W, or whether they're replacing it.
(Already mentioned, it seems.)

I think you're much more likely to find the specs you want in a 15" model, at least if you want it in the initial batch of Skylake machines.

This should be standard on most of the machines that would meet your other requirements, although there might be a few that only had a single mSATA or NGFF/m.2 slot (or two of them.)


Reasonably common to the newer generation of machines.

BTW, with the 2TB Samsung drive out, and with 1TB 2.5" SSDs under $400 now, one big 2.5" one may be more cost effective than two smaller ones.

Lenovo T450p, if it's announced (or the successor, if they adopt a different naming scheme), will be Skylake, sometime in Sept-Oct.

The T450p, by the way, is not by any stretch of the imagination an ultrabook. It's a full-size business notebook. If you're willing to get a slightly slower (but still Skylake quad core) processor than whatever replaces the T450p, the next Dell XPS 15 (which may or may not have an M3900 clone) is likely to be right up your alley -- 15" screen in a 14" chassis with super-thin bezels, and should be basically a skylake refresh of the current XPS 15, e.g. a reduced-wattage quad core and midrange gaming GPU -- although you'll be limited to 2 DIMM slots so 32gb as of this fall will be extremely pricy.

OTOH, you're looking at a 4-dimm-slot system otherwise, and those guys are heavy.

Resale value? What are these, cars?

As for engineering, the electronics are all the same; the ergonomics are mostly terribly and a lot of that is people copying Apple. If you're making a fashion statement, well, get the Apple.

Why would you want a tablet-like device?

The T430s is a pretty nice, light laptop, and goes to 16gb. To get lighter, you'd be going to a slower, reduced-voltage CPU, even a generation newer. Haswell was not much faster -- the Dell E6440 would be marginally faster, with a sorta-similar size and weight -- so if the T430s dies, there is still a new replacement option. If you want a quad-core, the T440p is a nice machine, but a bit thicker and heavier, and still limited to 16gb.