It's not the sort of technical complaint you hear about every day, but some purchasers of the Dell Latitude E6430u laptop found themselves enduring a particularly unpleasant quirk.

As early as June, affected Latitude owners have been taking to the Dell support forums in an effort to identify the cause of and solutions to a strong odour emitting from their computers. The original poster states that his laptop "smells as if it was assembled near a tomcat's litter box". Another said "I thought for sure one of my cats sprayed it, but there was something faulty with it so I had it replaced. The next one had the same exact issue. It's embarrassing taking it to clients because it smells so bad."  

Initially, Dell support staff had encouraged users to clean and air out their computers, but have since confirmed the urine smell was the result of a manufacturing problem. One Dell employee wrote earlier this month that "what we do know at this time is that this smell is absolutely not urine or any other type of biological material. The parts have been tested and we have confirmed this 100%. The smell is caused by a manufacturing process which has now been changed and we are confident that the issue is resolved for all new E6430u currently shipping."

The laptop's palm-rest (the area below the keyboard) has now been identified as the cause of the stink, and customers affected are being asked to contact Dell customer who "will take it from there".