Dell has finally released an official “fix” to the issue of its 6430u notebooks smelling like cat urine. A Dell Senior Technical Consultant, who goes by the twitter handle @SteveBatDell, announced the fix on his official Twitter account.
Here’s the official Dell solution to the E6430u smell issue: http://t.co/eDc8ewLXJR
— SteveB at Dell (@SteveBatDell) October 31, 2013
The above tweet directs you to a thread on the official Dell forums entitled “Solution to the Latitude 6430u Odor.” The actual post containing the fix was written and published by Kevin Dane. According to this LinkedIn profile page, Kevin Dane holds the title of “Executive Director: Reliability, Validation and Quality” at Dell. You can read the full post below.
How to fix the Dell 6430u cat pee smell
In Dane’s words:
When the Latitude 6430u was launched we received feedback from some customers commenting on an odor around the laptop. Dell immediately addressed the customer comments in order to resolve the situation and an investigation revealed that this was occurring as a result of a specific manufacturing process. We would like to reassure customers that the odor 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. Any customer who has a system with the odor can contact our technical support team at 1-800-456-3355 or www.dell.com/support and we will arrange to replace the palm rest assembly.
So there you have it. Dell will replace the palm rest assembly, though they don’t indicate that there’s anything you yourself can do to remedy the situation, instead pointing you towards the company’s tech support team.
If you have a 6430u that smells like cat pee, there’s your avenue to relief. Just be patient and, in the event that you have to ship this thing to Dell to get the palm rest replaced, we recommend that you wear latex gloves so you avoid getting the stench on you.
We’ll follow up according if anything else breaks regarding this issue. In the meantime, that dusty old netbook sitting in your closet isn’t looking so bad at the moment, is it?
