New 6430u smells awful

Steve I sent you a private message.

Thanks, I've sent a reply.

Hi Steve, sent you a twitter request. My machine is a couple weeks old and, well, it's unusable with the stench. 

I am on my third laptop.  The second one's speaker was faulty and the bio-metric device was unreliable.  It also smelled awful.  Now the third one interestingly enough seemed to smell better over out of the box, but it's getting worse.  I think it's time to move to a different Ultra-book...

Earlier this week, we arraigned for several customer systems to be shipped to our engineering team for evaluation. We are currently waiting on these units to arrive. Based on information collected so far, biological contamination is not suspected. As soon as we have more information, we'll update the thread.

I am the technology coordinator at Washington DC public high school. We have about 300 Dell Latitude 6430u laptops. 60 have been issued to teachers for the school year. So far, two staffers have complained of the cat urine smell. Is this something I can expect to hear from everyone and what should my next steps be?

Hey CNADIR,

Would you mind messaging me the service tag of one of the units that is exhibiting the issue? If you also have the service tag of one that is NOT exhibiting the issue, that would be a huge help.

Hi,

I have the same odor problem with my NEW 6430u which I have been waiting for a long time (and during that time resisting not to buy a Lenovo X1 Carbon). Definitelly this problem has nothing to do with air vents. I know little bit about plastics and I am quite sure that the problem is originated from the polymer used in the case of the laptop (top, buttom, keypad & palmrest) This polymer is mixed & molded with special additives and plastifiers (to accomodate the soft touch affect). Some of those chemicals are now migrating to the surface and creating this awful odor. Besides the odor, I am aslo more concerned about the possible negative health effects of these chemicals which are absorbed by our body through contact with skin and inhalation.

I am sure that everybody in DELL  well aware of this problem (as long as they have functioning nasal receptors). This can never be considered as an acceptable defect and I can not imagine how DELL can realease such a flagship model to the market in such condition?

Big disappointmet!

Add me to the list of people who have received a few of these terribly smelly Latitude E6430u's.      One night, I was working on a new unit and I thought for sure that the guy in the next cube who has a cat brought the cat into work and it urinated on the floor.  Smelled just like that.   Took me about an hour to determine that the foul odor was coming from the new laptop.

I've ordered 5 of the 6430u's and 2 of them have this smell, the other 3 do not.   It's awful.   I can smell it from a few feet away.   Like others have said, it smells like a cat urinated right around the Latitude logo on the front bezel.

Folks,

Engineering has a sample and has sent to it our vendor for analysis. I hope to be able to post more info in the next week or two. This is a top priority for Dell so I do not expect the analysis to take long. Please keep an eye on this thread for more info.

Dell Engineering and our suppliers have been analyzing a captured unit and are close to a root cause. A biological contaminate/health hazard is not suspected at this time. We appreciate everyone's patience and hope to post more information within a week.

hello,

i received my new e6430u yesterday and it smells like 10 year old sneakers! whats wrong with it?

Steve,

I just delivered a laptop to a client today and he refused to accept delivery, even after the keyboard had been replaced.  If you can email me or contact me that would be great. I have a very unhappy customer today.

Thanks,

Brian

Please PM me your contact info.