Dell laptop buyers make a stink over cat smell
Source: AP-Excite
By BREE FOWLER
NEW YORK (AP) - A noxious feline odor has some Dell customers caterwauling.
People who own Dell Latitude 6430u laptops are complaining that their pricey new computers are emitting a smell similar to cat urine. Some of them said on the company's online customer forums that the odor seems to be coming from the keyboard or palm rest.
The Round Rock, Texas, company originally advised buyers through its forums to try cleaning their keyboards with a soft cloth or compressed air, but the smell persisted.
"The machine is great, but it smells as if it was assembled near a tomcat's litter box," wrote a customer using the handle "three west" on a Dell forum back in June. "It is truly awful!"
FULL story at link.
Read more: http://apnews.excite.com/article/20131031/DA9PAEHG1.html
Dell officially goes private, says focus is on you
By Christopher Trout posted Oct 29th, 2013 at 1:49 PM
http://www.engadget.com/2013/10/29/dell-officially-goes-private/
Michael Dell's acquisition of his namesake company is now complete. The purchase under Dell and investment firm Silver Lake Partners was valued at $24.9 billion and, as Dell said during a September investor's call, the company is committed to innovation and customer service as a newly private company. He reiterated that point in a statement today, saying, "Our 110,000 team members worldwide are 100 percent focused on our customers and aggressively executing our long-term strategy for their benefit." In the lead up to the deal, Dell seems poised to re-focus the business around emerging markets, enterprise R&D and acquisitions, and the PC, tablet and virtual computing space. The move to privatize comes after multiple quarters of dwindling profits and lackluster tablet sales for one of the World's biggest PC makers.
Scuba
(53,475 posts)bigworld
(1,807 posts)They investigated and it came out to be some kind of adhesive used in the keyboards. Smelled like a combination of BO and cat urine. Wouldn't surprise me if this turned out to be something similar.
L0oniX
(31,493 posts)alp227
(31,961 posts)KurtNYC
(14,549 posts)customerserviceguy
(25,183 posts)Ok, the joke wrote itself, but I'm pounding away at my Dell laptop typing this right now. Picked it up used for $100 a few years ago, souped it up with much more RAM, DVD burner, second hard drive, Bluetooth, and even a remote (for slide show functioning, DVD playing, etc.) and it's still plugging away three years later. Super easy to work on, and the only issue is portability.
I got laughed at by a TSA agent when he saw the size of it when I carried it on board, but it is very nice to have in my motel room at the end of the day, to plan the next day's activities while on a faraway trip.
primavera
(5,191 posts)So it's kind of appropriate really.
oberliner
(58,724 posts)Contributions from this PAC to federal candidates
(48% to Democrats, 52% to Republicans)
http://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/lookup2.php?strID=C00369751&cycle=2012
gopiscrap
(23,674 posts)arikara
(5,562 posts)that i can't keep it in the house. It does smell like cat piss to me, and the smell never wears off like the new plastic smell used to do. I swear, China is mixing their toxic waste in with their consumer goods to get rid of it.
Kind of clever in a macabre sort of a way I guess.
truthisfreedom
(23,113 posts)And it stinks so much I gag when I walk past it.