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Dell Fixes Ultrabook That Smelled of Cat Urine
Sockatume writes "The BBC is reporting that Dell's Latitude 6430u Ultrabooks have an interesting characteristic you won't find in any Macbook Air: the palm rest emits an odor like cat urine. An issue with a manufacturing process is thought to be to blame. Although Dell has assured potential customers that the issue has been fixed, reports in the Dell support forum indicate that units with the novel fragrance continue to ship out to users. Dell staff state that the palm rest will be replaced by Dell at no cost, but only if the unit is still under warranty."
Runs like shit, smells like piss.
Solving Unix problems since 1989...
Least it was representative of the overall product before the fix
obviously this is why they don't ship mice with laptops, they were all eaten.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
My basement also smells of cat urine. When are you going to come and fix it?
...for they are subtle and will piss on your computer.
Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it.
Now that Dell is private again, they can continue to provide these innovative features without pressure from their stockholders.
Winner!
Solving Unix problems since 1989...
What a piss-poor excuse for a product launch. Don't these piss-ant Dell people have noses in their quality control department.
ETC
Great feature for people living in rodent-infested city apartments.
Seeing this on the front page is not exactly my proudest submission.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
the obvious product upgrade at this point is to rename the line the Dell Attitude, and piss on ya if you don't buy the extended warranty. so you have done the cyberworld a favor in pointing this out.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
It's ironic that the story would say you won't find this issue with a Mac Book air.
It wasn't too many years ago that iBooks had an issue where they would smell like body odor after the case had begun to oxidize.
We still have one. It still stinks.
I guess they were thinking most nerds wouldn't notice?
"Urine" for a surprise!
Naw, you have to feed a cat, that gets expensive. Much cheaper to just spray the laptops with cat urine to keep the mice out.
they purr when they're doing it, too.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
... and not been near one in years, how would you know it smells of cat's piss if you don't know what cat's piss smells of?
I would have blamed windows 8.1 and all the other crap they pre-install - perhaps it's the smell of crap.
Shh. the secret got out early but the product was late. This thing was intended to run OSX, but apple found out and changed their naming scheme just in the nick of time.
MacBooks are cages for Lions and Leopards, not just puny house cats....
Does it smeel like Male or Female?
A new feature no doubt
This is why Dell went private.
In clearly related news, "kittens, it was quickly discovered, do not scale" as Kittens-on-demand, $20 for 15 minutes of snuggling, melts down.
I though all Dell's had that smell lately. Honestly their quality has gone way down hill....
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I wonder how much they'd charge to fix my cat's smell? (She's out of warranty.)
Are there any manufacturing/polymer types (or even armchair chemists) around who would want to hazard a guess as to why a PC component would have that smell?
My understanding is that chassis materials don't differ wildly from laptop to laptop (ABS or ABS+PC seem to the the typical plastics, Aluminum or coated magnesium-alloy the usual metals, with some assorted adhesives and things). Is there some plasticizer, or mould-release agent, or incomplete-polymerization impurity, or particularly malodorous-if-the-proportions-aren't-right two-part adhesive out there?
we're starting to find out ;)
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
So every time--I just want to understand this, sir-- every time a laptop is micturated upon in this fair city, I have to compensate the owner?
from perfume to... not... our friend sulfur is usually there.
which could lead to a side discussion, instead of snide discussions, about how well the electrothingies inside the case will fare being cooped up with the palm rest in a laptop carrier after a few years.
I'd look up sulfoxones, as an example, if my lunch break wasn't over.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
You won't find it in a Macbook! You also won't find it in a Toshiba, Acer or an HP. But that's not the cock we are trying to suck.
But... the future refused to change.
Meth tends to have the cat urine smell as well, from what I heard. Maybe there were some such banned substances in those laptops?
next time, just look before you press the order now button.
I've bought products made in China that contained evil-smelling plastics.
I own said ultrabook. It is fantastic aside from the video resolution.
Now I'm sniffing the touchpad, and it has no such odor.
Quite a few of our white iBooks and then the white MacBooks would yellow on the palm rest. It seemed to be happening to the same people. I never told them it was "just them" but they were embarrassed anyway... They weren't "dirty" hands or anything like that, it must have been some unique protein or oils or something, it was really strange. Happy when the black MacBooks came out!
change it.
I guess dell let the cat out of the bag.
Dell staff state that the palm rest will be replaced by Dell at no cost, but only if the unit is still under warranty.
And what if the warranty expired before Dell decided to acknowledge that this defect was, in fact, a defect?
And if it's something in the manufacturing process, then the ultrabook was defective since day one, the entire time that Dell warrants it was "free of defects." So how is refusing to fix it if the clock has run out not breaching Dell's obligations under the warranty?
This is not exactly instilling confidence in Dell's products and their warranties. Sounds more like something HP would do...
It's the new dell Scratch and sniff mouse pad designed by R Kelly..
You can also use it to mark your territory to keep the dogs away. Only 39.99. With 2 year subscription.
From the greatest sitcom ever, Father Ted.
Stick Men
...You're getting a smell!
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
It's just increasingly hard to point fingers to "made in China" when there is a quality problem, because almost all electronics are made there these days. From cheap junk to very high-quality equipment. They are just a big factory and make anything that the customer orders. I bet there's a factory in China that could have made the laptop case from a sleek, low-odor plastic type if Dell had ordered from them. Instead they went with Cat Pee Plastics.
People are claiming they had to put their cats down, thinking this was due to the smell.
I smell some masterful trolling about to happen.
Oh, wait, that's this Dell in my lap.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Dell's taking the blame, but the cat still isn't trustworthy. First the mouse is gone, then the track pad smells like wee.
Easy Online Role Playing Campaign Management
The fix was simple for Dell, horrendous for PETA. Dell called in feline exterminators to their factory.
I can understand the need to olfactory satisfaction by the computer owners, but gustatory pleasure of owning a laptop? Interesting!
"..Gawwwwd I'll kill that cat!"
Fact is, though I love the slogan of "Dude, you've been Delled!", for the most part, Dell has handled its rise from small to large quite well.
They've really -- for the most part -- avoided becoming the characteristic fortune-500 company, that decides to profiteer on their customers and supliers, and sees quality fall through the floor [followed by stock price], and ends up in the compost heap of an infinite loop of mergers with other fortune 500 companies, losing money [but never vanishing] the whole way.
Hopefully, that won't change.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
So as a dell tech i can't wait to deal with this issue and all the smart-ass comments people are gonna give me....
Never have never will buy a dell.
This new flavor of hardware can be especially suitable for wine experts.
As you all know Sauvignon wine has the same smell of cat's pee.