I was pricing out both on the public web site and a premier site I have access to, and I saw the quad-cores on both as of last night.

Assuming you are US-based, you have to scroll right on the public site to see them. Give this link a shot.

They are not currently offering fully configurable models via the web site, but I believe if you call sales they can configure options only available via Premier on the web.

Dell is not yet offering Thunderbolt on any of their current-generation professional systems. Unofficial discussions on notebookreviewforum suggest that It'll be orderable starting due right around the 29th of this month. I can't vouch for the quality of that information, but that's true even for the big workstations.

The 5470 can work with a quad-core CPU and a 65W supply -- but only if not equipped with a discrete GPU; models with both require a 90W... and that's with only a 14" screen. For my use, lacking a dGPU is actually a plus -- dual-GPU systems play poorly with Linux.

I'm fairly sure the P50s is not only dual-core-only, it's dual-core ULV (Ultrabook CPU, e.g. something like an i7-6600U.) That was the case with the W550s, at any rate. (Dual-core full-voltage/H-series processors seem to be becoming nearly extinct in the wild...)

Assuming "2 HD capacity" works for one 2.5" drive and one mini-card, it looks likely that the the announced-but-not-yet-shipping Lenovo T460p (should be orderable around the end of this month, according to various webbed sources) is likely to fit the bill -- the T440p did (although it is possible that they followed Dell in making the design either/or.)

The Dell 5470 doesn't officially support 32GB RAM (although they should work; RAM support on modern machines is entirely up to the CPU) and doesn't support two HDs -- it's M.2 card or 2.5" and the construction doesn't seem to have any way around that.

HP hasn't announced their Skylake upgrades to their dockable Elitebook systems yet; I don't think they had a 14" quad-core with their Haswell-generation ones, and I can't remember if they still have a real docking station.

Assuming you mean the new Skylake/Infinity display model, yes:
http://www.crucial.com/usa/en/compat...-15-%289550%29

Makes sense -- although there's always a possibility they'll completely misread requests and make an ultrabook version with only soldered memory.

(As an aside, I'm very curious how long it will take to get 32GB SO-DIMMs. I don't expect to need 64GB it in the lifetime of my next machine, but within the next few years...)

For my own needs, I'm a bit more particular -- and honest, I'm more concerned with the keyboard feel than the layout; the only machine I've found the layout unusable on was the X1 Carbon 2 which didn't have a function key row at all. It was also too slow to do my work on; ~20 minute build times, vs. ~6 with a real processor.

If I'm going to be coding really heavily on my laptop away from my desk at home/work, I can throw a portable mechanical keyboard into my bag -- the first of those two is really, really light and while the layout is non-traditional and the keys clicky, it's small and light enough to go in a carry-on.

As I said, if I'm not doing work or playing games, I can still live with the X201.

My last employer was of the opinion that developers should do build and test remotely in the data center.

I had to raise a stink to get a reasonably powerful non-Mac, as doing Java development on relatively large projects, being able to get the whole thing to load in an IDE and be reasonably responsive requires a relatively high-end processor and a lot of memory, and getting good build times locally also requires a fairly beefy processor.

For their Android developers, they "got" that (and the Macbook Pro 15" wasn't too bad of a choice for those folk); for server-side Java projects, they didn't. It's one of many annoyances at their culture that lead to my making it a relatively short-term employer.

The employer before that (where I was at for 8+ years) I was the one of the squeakiest wheels about build times (etc), and ended up being the liaison between engineering and the IT folks for what configurations they should buy for heavily technical folks.

16GB individual sticks, and 32GB kits are, and have been, in stock on and off from a number of US retailers since before systems that would take them were commonly available -- including direct from Crucial. (I don't recommend the kit from them as there's zero savings -- they'll actually charge you a penny extra for the privilege.)

Even some of the faster 2400mhz stuff, although I'd recommend sticking to a better known brand.

Dell directly does seem to have some memory supply issues, and it's still often more cost effective to buy machines with a minimal amount of memory and then upgrade.