PC giant admits “odour around the laptop” after consumers complained about the Latitude smelling of cats urineThe unusual smell on the Latitude 6430u was the result of “a specific manufacturing process”, wrote Kevin Dane, Executive Director: Reliability, Validation and Quality at Dell on a blog, confirming the ‘odour’ has been wafting around since June.
However, Dane did not specifically refer to the unusual ‘odour’ as stinking of cats urine, blaming it on a “specific manufacturing process.”
“When the Latitude 6430u was launched we received feedback from some customers commenting on an odour around the laptop.
“We would like to reassure customers that the odoor was not related to biological contamination nor did it present a health hazard. The manufacturing process has subsequently been amended and newly purchased Latitude 6430us are not affected by the issue.”
One Dell Latitude owner wrote on June 14: “So a few weeks ago I got a new Latitude 6430u for work.The machine is great, but it smells as if it was assembled near a tomcats litter box. It is truly awful! It seems to be coming from the keyboard.”
Dane says any customer who has a system with the odour can contact its technical support team at www.dell.com/support and it will arrange to replace the palm rest assembly.
Alternatively the following advice was posted on Dell’s support forum to remove the odour:
“Remove the keyboard and try to clean it with a soft cloth. Also use a can of compressed air to clean the Keyboard area. Please follow the instructions from the manual to remove the keyboard.”
