Dell Fixes Ultrabook That Smelled of Cat Urine

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Dell Fixes Ultrabook That Smelled of Cat Urine

Posted by Unknown on Wednesday October 30, 2013 @04:22AM from the catbert's-revenge dept.

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."

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Stands to reason by DougOtto · 2013-10-30 04:23 · Score: 4, Funny

Runs like shit, smells like piss.

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Solving Unix problems since 1989...
1. Re:Stands to reason by TheGratefulNet · 2013-10-30 04:25 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  dell has a 'drug free workplace' policy and insists all employees be piss tested.
  now, FINALLY, I understand why.
  they were looking for materials suppliers, of a sort...
  
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  "It is now safe to switch off your computer."
2. Re:Stands to reason by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-30 04:28 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  What do you think the "u" in 6430u stands for?
3. Re:Stands to reason by Sockatume · 2013-10-30 04:40 · Score: 2
  
  "U won't believe how much it smells like cat pee."
  
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  No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
4. Re:Stands to reason by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-30 05:42 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Just Michael Dell marking his territory.
5. Re:Stands to reason by skids · 2013-10-30 06:11 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  Actually meth labs also smell like cat urine. So it might be that all the tiny elves that live inside the device were "overclocked" so to speak.
  
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  Someone had to do it.
Dude! You're getting a Smell! by swschrad · 2013-10-30 04:24 · Score: 5, Funny

obviously this is why they don't ship mice with laptops, they were all eaten.

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OK, Dell by mbone · 2013-10-30 04:25 · Score: 2, Insightful

My basement also smells of cat urine. When are you going to come and fix it?
1. Re:OK, Dell by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-30 04:45 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  when I was a kid we had our cat fixed, but the liter box area still smelled like urine
  Well, maybe you should have used a pint box instead. ;-)
Do not meddle in the affairs of cats... by uncle+slacky · 2013-10-30 04:26 · Score: 4, Funny

...for they are subtle and will piss on your computer.

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Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it.
1. Re:Do not meddle in the affairs of cats... by QRDeNameland · 2013-10-30 10:14 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  So that's the fix... uninstall Windows?
  Close...the problem was that the machine was running Windows XPee.
  
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A Feature! by mythosaz · 2013-10-30 04:27 · Score: 2

Now that Dell is private again, they can continue to provide these innovative features without pressure from their stockholders.
1. Re:A Feature! by Silvrmane · 2013-10-30 04:51 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  Dude, really? Show me an issue with Apple products that in the end WASN'T fixed by the company. I'll bet you'll have a hard time finding an example. Sure, in the short term they may deny there is a problem, but they do customer service at an exemplary level, sometimes fixing or replacing products they don't even make to help their customers have the best consumer experience possible.
  
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2. Re:A Feature! by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-30 05:12 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  How about the issue with the BGAs of the NVIDIA (M650?) GPUs in the MacBook Pros of 2008? Even though it was a manufacturing defect (Apple pointed the finger at NVIDIA and NVIDIA pointed the finger at Apple), as the system integrator, Apple should have made things right right from the start. If I remember correctly, it wasn't until a class action lawsuit that Apple finally did something, which was to replace those computers that had actually gone bad. What Apple should have done was issue a recall and replace the boards of every MacBook Pro in that run.
  I had a MacBook Pro from that period and it didn't really exhibit any real problems so I did not qualify for any replacement parts. In December of last year, the computer went kaput -- totally dead. Pressing the power button does nothing: the hard drive doesn't spin up, the CPU fan doesn't spin up, nothing. And of course, the entire thing is out of warranty.
  In all my years of using computers, I have never had a computer totally fail as the MacBook Pro did. Perhaps things will change with Tim Cook at the helm but at the time, Apple was a reflection of Jobs' psychopathic way of dealing with people and money.
3. Re:A Feature! by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2013-10-30 05:23 · Score: 2
  
  Apple's support model is (with the exception of prosaic stuff like 'hard drive is dead, sounds like coffee-grinder', where the ability to get retail support from somebody other than the geek squad is quite a blessing for people without corporate support contracts):
  
  1. Deny that a problem exists. Reports of the problem will silently disappear from their message boards, CSRs will either emit cluelessness, or (if challeged) suggest that customer misuse was the cause.
  
  2. Wait. Despite the outward appearance of not giving a fuck, Apple clearly isn't oblivious to the level of buzz, and apparent frequency with which a problem is occuring.
  
  3. One of two options: if the buzz level of step 2 was low enough, continue to insist that product N is absolutely without fault, until it's time to release revision N+1, where the problem will silently be fixed, with absolutely no acknowledgement that the change was made to address any particular issue. If the buzz level of step 2 is high enough, Apple will then offer repair replacement, sometimes even for otherwise-out-of-warranty hardware.
4. Re:A Feature! by omnichad · 2013-10-30 05:32 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Are you kidding? They would delete the comments on the community discussion board and tell the users they're smelling it wrong.
5. Re:A Feature! by Dahamma · 2013-10-30 05:53 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Actually, my experiences with Apple's (in store, at least) support has been extremely positive.
  #1: yes, this is somewhat true. Though it's more like "deny it's a widespread or manufacturing defect".
  #2: not really relevant to in-person support. If you ware just going to whine anonymously on a forum good luck anyway.
  #3: My girlfriend is on her 4th iPhone 4S now. First she dropped (finally overpriced AppleCare comes in handy), second the mic went bad, 3rd wouldn't charge. Clearly some manufacturing issues on the last two but at least they replaced them with new phones (not refurbs... I guess another advantage of AppleCare) with no questions asked. Further, she brought in a 5+ year old Macbook (one of those white plastic ones) that had a (literal) battery meltdown. They replaced the whole case, battery, and even the keyboard (damaged by our cat ripping off a key). Again, no questions asked, no charge. Finally, they actually replaced the glass on my iPad a while back after my cat knocked it off a table (yeah, what's with my cats and Apple products... though it is ironic the original article is about Dell and cat piss...) at no charge. Guess my sob story was good, because I was expecting they'd charge ~$200 (in which case I would probably have done it myself).
  Moral of the story is, yes, Apple will NEVER admit they do anything (in design or manufacturing) wrong, but they DO tend to stand behind their products...
6. Re:A Feature! by DJRumpy · 2013-10-30 07:23 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  This hasn't been my experience with Apple either. I had a Macbook Pro (17" 2008) that was affected by an issue with a bad nVidia card causing a black screen on boot up. nVidia claimed the issue did not affect my Macbook. Apple investigated and found a significant number of those Macbook owners who were affected, and warrantied the repair anyway. My Macbook Pro was 3 years out of warranty in late 2012 when I had this happen to my Macbook (it was 4 years old at the time), and Apple replace the motherboard free of charge, no questions asked. I made an appointment, brought it in, and they offered the repair to me after troubleshooting it on the counter.
  I have also gone in with a missing key on a keyboard, and they replace it free of charge. I also had an iPhone fresh from the factory with markings on the case when I took it out of the box. I found this when it was shipped to my home. They replaced it with a new one, again no questions asked.
  I do know that Apple always tops the satisfaction survey and has for the last decade. There's a reason for that, and it's certainly not due to poor service.
I'll level with you by Sockatume · 2013-10-30 04:30 · Score: 5, Informative

Seeing this on the front page is not exactly my proudest submission.

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No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
1. Re:I'll level with you by c · 2013-10-30 04:44 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  It's still better than a SlashBI or Slashdot TV submission.
  Granted, it's a low bar.
  
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Re:Well by i+kan+reed · 2013-10-30 04:30 · Score: 2

Hey, maybe with Dell going private, all the quarterly-earnings-seeking cost-cutting will go away. Maybe they'll not have support that causes tooth pain and manufacture custom computers of some basic quality again.
Also maybe they'll make that pig-jet I designed.
Re:Pissed off customers by rubycodez · 2013-10-30 04:34 · Score: 4, Funny

and I thought only IBM sold a Pee-series
Macs had a similar issue not long ago by RiscIt · 2013-10-30 04:35 · Score: 5, Interesting

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?
1. Re:Macs had a similar issue not long ago by Sockatume · 2013-10-30 04:39 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  Well obviously Apple patented human BO and Dell had to look elsewhere.
  
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  No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
2. Re:Macs had a similar issue not long ago by oji-sama · 2013-10-30 04:53 · Score: 2
  
  It's ironic that the story would say you won't find this issue with a Mac Book air.
  Not really, that seems to be a non-article related Macbook Air promotion. "The BBC is reporting that Dell's Latitude 6430u Ultrabooks have an interesting characteristic you won't find in any Macbook Air". Surprisingly the words Macbook and Apple seem to be missing from the article.
  
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  It is what it is.
Surprise! by Pagey123 · 2013-10-30 04:36 · Score: 3, Funny

"Urine" for a surprise!
Re:Pissed off customers by bill_mcgonigle · 2013-10-30 04:37 · Score: 3, Funny

I was disappointed to not find any Frosty Cat Piss posts down at -1.

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Re:Well by scottbomb · 2013-10-30 04:47 · Score: 2

Sorry to say, but the business model at Dell is changing and they no longer offer much in the way of customization. They are actually moving away from Just In Time.
All joking aside... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2013-10-30 05:28 · Score: 2

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?
1. Re:All joking aside... by Gryle · 2013-10-30 05:56 · Score: 2
  
  Armchair chemist (but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night...) armed with wikipedia. Ammonia has a related smell to cat urine so perhaps they don't entirely dry the components after rinsing them with an amide-based solvent. My other guess would be some kind of thiol-reaction somewhere in the casing triggered by the heat of the circuits. If you're really curious Wikipedia has an entry on the actual chemical responsible for cat-urine-odor here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_pheromone#Cat_urine_odorants. Looks like something that could polymerize or be formed by excess sulfur or alcohol in the plastics mix.
  
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