Hindsight is a wonderful thing, and we have all learned now from this tragic accident.
It needs to be borne in mind that it takes around 20 minutes to get a cruising jet onto the ground at normal rates of descent.
Giving this crew extreme foresight, let's say that they could have known at T-15 that they needed to land asap?
There is not a lot of fat there. It is going to mean declaring a 'Mayday' and making an emergency landing at the nearest airfield at the first significant smoke EVERY TIME if you are going to get it done in the time they had. Is that feasible? How many incidents of 'smoke in the cockpit' do we get every year? Will we always get the c/crew to set-up for a ditching (if over water) EVERY TIME we have smoke? Will EVERY pilot scream 'Mayday' with smoke in the cockpit and elbow all others aside in a dash to a runway?
Was there an airfield within 15 minutes? As Alf says, the 'Ditch' decision is a big one, and probably only became a 'considered' option at T-5:30? From then on the flight deck would have been a horrendous place to be. How many people would survive a night ditching in Artic waters?
I understand that having panel access would not have helped as the power circuit concerned was not breakered and the extinguishers on board could not put out a fire of that intensity anyway.
I personally find reliving the incident minute by minute distressful and I think we just have to take away our own thoughts on what we would do - and sorrow for those who lost.
It makes ETOPS a sobering option.