If you recently purchased a new Dell Latitude 6430u Laptop computer, then you probably noticed a little something extra with the purchase. No, not an extra stick of RAM. Buyers are reporting that their new 6430u’s are smelling like cat pee. And they’re not being that nice about it.
There is even a Dell community devoted to this called “New 6430u Smells Awful”. It’s full of colorful complaints such as “The machine is great, but smells as if it was assembled near a tomcats litterbox.” And, this is just the beginning of the colorful things people had to say about the issue.
Complaints started pouring in to dell last June and the company suggested that people clean the keyboard with a damp cloth and then blow the keyboard out with a compressed air can. According to owners, that only succeeded in blowing the stench around.
Dell finally came out with an explanation. After replacing some units and being able to investigate the recalled computers they were able to narrow it down to the devices palm rest. It was apparently a manufacturing process of the palm rest and Dell has since stopped that process and solved the issue.
Dell has asked owners of the cat-wizz computers to contact technical support and request the new palm rest.
Dell senior technical consultant SteveB has the official response, saying, “The issue was fully investigated and Dell has determined that the smell is not at all related to cat urine or any biological contaminate. Further testing revealed that there is no health hazard related to the smell.”
So, the issue is fixed. You can stop hiding your computers in dark offices or stuffing them back into laptop bags whenever you have a client “pop in.”