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"Over the past couple of months, people who have purchased a Dell Latitude 6430u have noticed something unusual about their new computers. Namely, that they seem to emit an unbearably awful stench \u2014 as if \u201Cassembled near a tomcats litter box,\u201D as one user on the Dell hardware support message board put it. (And you thought your noisy laptop fan was bad.)\nThe issue first came to light when a user \u2014 called three west \u2014 complained about it on the aforementioned message board in June, and since then, it has only gotten more embarrassing. Apparently, cleaning the keyboard \u2014 as Dell initially suggested \u2014 did nothing to alleviate matters, and several other users began to chime in with their own concerns about the smell.\n\u201CI thought for sure one of my cats sprayed it, but there was something faulty with it so I had it replaced,\u201D user horcheta wrote about a month after the thread was first created. \u201CThe next one had the same exact issue. It\u2019s embarrassing taking it to clients because it smells so bad.\u201D\nAs see on the thread, the Dell team appears to be taking the allegations very seriously \u2014 Senior Technical Consultant Steve B has been communicating with thread members since August and seems to believe they\u2019re close to determining where the problem lies. On Oct. 14, he posted:\n\nWe really appreciate everyone\u2019s patience as we work thru this issue. The problem has been resolved and the past few weeks I have been waiting on engineering to release detailed information on a root cause and resolution. We are currently waiting on final engineering failure analysis for a definitive root cause which is expected to come any day now. Once we have this, we can make an official comment. In the meantime, I\u2019ll provide a few details of what we do know.\nThe smell was related to a manufacturing process that has now been changed\nThe smell is not in any way related to biological contamination\nThe smell is not at all health hazard\nIf you order an E6430u now, it will not have the issue\nAs soon as we have final engineering failure analysis, more information will be posted on how to immediately resolve the issue. We hope to have the information this week so please keep watching this thread.So hey, it could be worse! Your computer might smell like urine, but it\u2019s not actually urine.\n\nOf course, that didn\u2019t do a whole lot to quell the frustrations of those who\u2019d been saddled with the stink for months without any reprieve. \u201CSo when you write that the 'problem has been resolved,' do you mean that when I open my computer it will no longer smell like a pack of well hydrated feral cats have used it for target practice resolved, or do you mean that you have resolved the mystery of what has caused the problem?,\u201D user holysmokecp asked.\nOn Twitter, Steve seems to be pretty confident that he\u2019ll have some kind of update for all of us in the coming week. Now that the story\u2019s been picking up steam, \u2014 a number of British news outlets have already covered the thread \u2014 maybe they\u2019ll be able to devote more time and attention to finding a solution. Although it also does means that more people are going to jump onto the thread with false information and ridiculous cat jokes.\nHave something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.\nImage: Flickr, Meg_Nicol"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2013/10/30/dell-cat-pee/>