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Users complain their Dell 6430u laptops smell like cat piss

en.community.dell.com

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Re: Users complain their Dell 6430u laptops smell like cat piss

#81

Post by lostlogin »

andrewflnr wrote: post #55
whalesalad wrote: post #17

Reminds me of my sisters Volkswagen beetle. It's got some material under the leather that smells exactly like crayons. It's impossible to get rid of. Not as bad as cat piss but really strong. Gives me a feeling of nostalgia every time I'm in it haha. Google "Volkswagen smells like crayons" and you'll find a lot of VWs in the early 2000s have the same smell.

My Ford Escape's air conditioning smells like cat pee sometimes, when it's first waking up. Not too badly, but the resemblance is quite distinct.

A friend vomited into her cars aircon vent on the dash once while worse for wear. The phrase blowing chunks came to mind when she turned on the aircon a few days later. That car was no longer the chosen transport method for group outings.

Re: Users complain their Dell 6430u laptops smell like cat piss

#82

Post by jval »

csense wrote: post #77

Maybe this is something that's only smellable by a certain subset of the human population. I invited a family member to try Chipotle once. She complained of a soapy taste in the food. We both thought maybe a staff member had been careless about rinsing hands after washing with soap. I later learned that some people have a genetic predisposition to perceive cilantro, an herb common in Mexican food, as a soapy taste [1…

Yeah, I have this too. I went 22 years thinking that people were dropping soap in my meals. I would think 'Damn, do people just accidentally grab the soap bottle instead of the sauce?'. Couldn't figure out how else such a strong taste of soap could be in my mouth. But yeah, turns out it was cilantro.

Re: Users complain their Dell 6430u laptops smell like cat piss

#83

Post by lostlogin »

staringispolite wrote: post #40

Specifically cat urine, not other urine? I must be thankfully smell-deficient because I wouldn't be able to tell the difference, and I grew up with cats for 20 years

We travels in Italy and our budget was low (6 weeks at $30 euros a day). We stayed at camp grounds most of the time. It was good, except they often had cat colony's nearby. The smell was horrific and traveled a long way. It put me off cats in such a big way that 10ish years later I still don't like them.

Re: Users complain their Dell 6430u laptops smell like cat piss

#84

Post by chrissnell »

donniefitz2 wrote: post #59
whalesalad wrote: post #17

Reminds me of my sisters Volkswagen beetle. It's got some material under the leather that smells exactly like crayons. It's impossible to get rid of. Not as bad as cat piss but really strong. Gives me a feeling of nostalgia every time I'm in it haha. Google "Volkswagen smells like crayons" and you'll find a lot of VWs in the early 2000s have the same smell.

I used to work on VW's in the early 2000's and VW uses really heavy wax on all of the inner body panels to prevent rust. It's thick and nasty and smells very strong (especially in a hot climate). I used get that stuff all over me and it was tough to wash it off.

Sounds like cosmoline. My ex-military 1987 Land Rover Defender was slathered in the stuff, presumably by its previous owner, the British Army. It smells awful and coincidentally, a lot like cat piss. It's nearly impossible to remove, requiring a solvent like diesel fuel or mineral spirits.

Anyhow, back to the topic, I tend to agree with one of the commenters on the Dell forums. This doesn't sound like glue, or preservative, or actual cat piss. This sounds like a defect in the plastics manufacturing process, perhaps a bad batch of some component chemical. Not sure if these laptops came from China but tainted or counterfeit industrial products are common there. It's possible that a sub-contractor or sub-sub-contractor manufactured these plastic pieces and they slipped by QC. I can't imagine a laptop manufacturer even doing "smell testing" on their products and it's easy to see how this might have escaped notice by the assembly line workers, especially if they're working in a factory town with awful air pollution.

Re: Users complain their Dell 6430u laptops smell like cat piss

#85

Post by petsos »

wizzard wrote: post #71
ekianjo wrote: post #29

If it were on Apple boards they would have deleted the message I guess, and pretended nothing ever happened :) EDIT: in case people who downvote me don't understand the reference, see yesterday's news regarding Larry Lessig's complaint being censored on Apple forums, apparently for the interest of keeping the forums clean . Wouldn't that kind of "cat piss" complaint fall in the exact same "unhelpful comment" category…

Anyone who downvotes you hasn't tried to use their forums. I hadn't seen yesterday's news though so here's a link for anyone else interested: http://lessig.tumblr.com/post/65338904338/wow-or-from-the-wh...

Or you know is tired of seeing every thread turning to an Apple flame.

Re: Users complain their Dell 6430u laptops smell like cat piss

#86

Post by aerlinger »

Hopefully this is an issue that can easily be resolved with one of their "critical updates"

(funny enough I went to their driver page (http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/download.aspx) and it shows an error. Maybe they forgot to install the driver that drives their driver page?)

Re: Users complain their Dell 6430u laptops smell like cat piss

#87

Post by enraged_camel »

petsos wrote: post #85
wizzard wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone who downvotes you hasn't tried to use their forums. I hadn't seen yesterday's news though so here's a link for anyone else interested: http://lessig.tumblr.com/post/65338904338/wow-or-from-the-wh...

Or you know is tired of seeing every thread turning to an Apple flame.

Exactly. This is a thread about Dell, and it should remain that way. The parent was simply flamebait.

edit: three Apple-haters so far. Keep them comin'! :)

Re: Users complain their Dell 6430u laptops smell like cat piss

#88

Post by paulgerhardt »

paddy_m wrote: post #78
krenoten wrote: post #31

It's part of a hardening process that has been employed by weapon smiths for time immemorial, known as "quenching". After you form the laptop case / sword / rifle barrel, and it is still hot, it is to be submerged in urine. I'm surprised it's taken laptop manufacturers so long to catch up.

Supposedly BMW did that to their turbo F1 engines in the eighties. They would have a bunch of blocks sitting out in the cold, and they would pee on them to age them. That and welding the cylinder head to the block gave them 1500 hp out of a 1.5 liter engine for one lap. http://www.autoevolution.com/news/turbocharged-engines-in-fo...

Wow, I honestly thought you guys were both trolling. From the article above comes this brilliant hack:

  While some may laugh at this strange solution by the German manufacturer,
  the urinating process is based on nitridization (a process which introduces
  nitrogen into the surface of a material and is widely used in automotive,
  mechanical and aeronautical engineering, having the property of a 
  case hardening treatment of predominantly steel but also for titanium,
  aluminium and molybdenum). Why are we talking about nitridization?
  Because urine seems to contain numerous waste compounds, many rich in 
  nitrogen. We can't yet figure out how the German engineers found this 
  particular method to strengthen the cylinder blocks – and not use a 
  more technological measure – but it makes for some interesting stories to
  tell out grandsons.
That season Brabham-BMW finished first.

Re: Users complain their Dell 6430u laptops smell like cat piss

#90

Post by ekianjo »

petsos wrote: post #85
wizzard wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone who downvotes you hasn't tried to use their forums. I hadn't seen yesterday's news though so here's a link for anyone else interested: http://lessig.tumblr.com/post/65338904338/wow-or-from-the-wh...

Or you know is tired of seeing every thread turning to an Apple flame.

This is actually very much relevant to the recent news. Yesterday you have Apple removing valid complaints from one user about their products, while Dell has a very different company approach to let the information flow transparently among their followers. This thread would not even have appeared if there were no such transparency.
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