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Ok, so I don't know what a developer laptop is, but as a developer who lives in linux all day, I have a pretty good idea of what would make a good laptop for me. 

1. distribute your laptop with vanilla ubuntu, no add-ins or additional software. Not so much as an icon for DELL support. Make sure the laptop runs well out of the box on debian... if I'm buying a laptop designed for living in the linux world I think everything in the laptop should work out of the box. It's ok if it works in Ubuntu, but I switch distros a lot so I'd expect it to work well everywhere. Don't be like 'well we gotta add the restricted drivers and ffshow and a support center icon' No! Don't make me format this thing right out of the gate...
2. two hard drive bays - this way I can rock a fast boot drive and a large drive for storage. So I'd want two 2.5 in sata bays and definately a SATA stick mount by the ram, that way I can also RAID the two 2.5 inch sata drives and boot off of a third drive.
3.  You don't need the largest screen, but it should have a large resolution. It should have mulitlble video output options. I develop in a dual screen setup so I want to be able to push that on any development laptop. So, two HDMI ports, DVI ports whatever works best but somehow it needs to support that setup.
4. A good, solid BIOS with all the little features I would expect with a great gaming motherboard, sans the overclocking.
5. I don't think it needs to be a super powerhouse, I'd rather have a thin system then a strapped powerhouse. A decent GPU something that more than run compiz, maybe something that could dual boot into Windows and play a game at a decent pace. That's secondary though, to me the biggest thing would be a gpu that doesn't disappoint me on the driver front. 
6.  I think developers are going to expect tons of RAM slots and maybe an accessable CPU slot that supports a ton of CPU's in a popular socket. Again, I'd blow all that for a thin laptop with decent RAM support but I think most developers would prefer expandability.
7. USB3, SATA6.0, all the perphrial connections should be top notch.. Multitouch trackpad, backlit keys, etc... c'mon, I'm the person who cares about this stuff so hook me up.
8. I'm surrounded by mac users. I don't think my system should be prettier, but please... no plastic, no OS stickers, don't destroy the bottom with service tag stickers and warnings about heat, don't screw up your logo placement... for the love of god let me show this thing off. 

So that's my wishlist. I swear, if they just release an alienware laptop I'll burn this mutha down...

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