Dell, Gearing Up for a Massive Vostro Notebook Recall

Earlier this week Dell started shipping its Vostro 1310 and 1510 notebook PC series with an improperly-configured keyboard. As previously reported, the company equipped its notebooks with an additional slash key, situated right between the left Shift and the Z, which not only looks strange, but also made typing a living hell.

Despite the fact that users such as Jack Gordon alerted the company on the spot, it was only yesterday that Dell managed to release an official response beside the "we'll investigate it immediately" PR cliché.

"There is no way to say it... we made a mistake and want to apologize to affected customers", claimed Dell's Bill Bivin in a blog post. "I want to point out that this issue only affects some users in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. It should not be an issue for customers in any other region", he continued.

Dell claims that the Slash key has been placed between the Shift key and the Z cap on purpose, but it was a slightly larger Left Shift key that caused the bottom row to shift one position to the right. Just like domino tiles, a single misaligned key forced the entire row to change its normal position.

According to the same blog post, Dell is currently gearing up to make a massive recall for the Vostro 1310 and 1510 notebook PCs sold on the European, the Middle East and African markets. However, the company is also evaluating two other options: users can either have the updated keyboard along with a BIOS fix shipped to them for a DIY operation, or they can have a field technician fix the glitch on site.

The company claims that the keyboard replacement operation is extremely simple, as it is thoroughly documented in the field service manual. The company will even provide its affected customers with a walkthrough video that covers the entire process.