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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

#111

Post by tempestn »

jimmywong wrote: post #63
sandGorgon wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reply is even more interesting . This is by an official rep. Really impressed by Dell. "As mentioned above, no biological hazard was involved and we do know that a manufacturing process was the root cause. That process was changed which resolved the issue on newly manufactured units. As for everyone out there with a unit that still exhibits the symptoms, we haven't forgotten about you and will make things right.…

What's so impressive? It is just a delaying tactic from June till now. And still no resolution.

Agreed. Especially unimpressive is the long delay between when they apparently discovered the cause and now, when they still haven't revealed it, even as the rep has stated for weeks that it'll be "any day now".

I also wasn't super impressed with the first few replies from lower level reps that kept suggesting blowing it out with compressed air even after it was clear that there was a larger problem.

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

#112

Post by beambot »

Anm wrote: post #109
frogpelt wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have found that orange-flavored Trident gum and a certain type of evergreen bushes commonly used in landscaping around shopping centers also smell like cat urine from a short distance. Cat urine smell is such a pervasive entity.

"cat urine" and "gum" should not be used in the same sentence. I'll leave that one out of my breathe freshener options.

Many people find the smell of durians equally repugnant... and you can buy durian flavored gum.

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

#113

Post by albertyw »

My guess is that Dell laptops have incorrectly vulcanized rubber. During vulcanization, sulfur compounds are added to rubber to make it more elastic. Cat urine also contains a high amount of sulfur compounds. If Dell's suppliers got the vulcanization process wrong, sulfur could be leeching out of the laptop's rubber components.

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

#114

Post by noisy_boy »

paulgerhardt wrote: post #88
paddy_m wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> having the property of a case hardening treatment of predominantly steel but also for titanium, aluminium and molybdenum).

Does that mean applying piss on your iPhone's aluminium body would harden it?

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

#116

Post by drblast »

tempestn wrote: post #107
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…

Reminds me of cumin. I always thought it smelled like really bad BO, and my wife thought I was crazy. This made me check, and it turns out lots of people agree!

Right there with you. I'm baffled how anyone could not smell that.

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

#117

Post by alan_cx »

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…

Sad that you felt you had to explain the joke :(

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

#118

Post by alan_cx »

noisy_boy wrote: post #114
paulgerhardt wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> having the property of a case hardening treatment of predominantly steel but also for titanium, aluminium and molybdenum). Does that mean applying piss on your iPhone's aluminium body would harden it?

Absolutely, give it a go. It works for all Apple products. It works best in an Apple store...

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

#119

Post by jdale27 »

hrjet wrote: post #96
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…

This is very much true in my own experience. I have an incredibly sensitive nose especially to alarming things. I once woke up from my sleep due to a LPG gas leak in a different floor, and alerted them of the leak! People who were awake hadn't noticed the smell; but once alerted they could easily smell it. Also, once when I was working on a new Dell laptop, it started giving out an acrid smell when running CPU-intens…

It depends on where the "different behavior" originates from, but in the case of traits like olfactory acuity that probably have a large genetic component, it's related to the general idea of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_diversity. I am also reminded of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisher%27s_fundamental_theorem_....
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