MSI media tour 2005 Making This World A Better Place To Live

Micro-Star International (MSI) will be giving a greater focus on producing
environmentally safe products, even if it means higher cost of production.
Announcing this strategic decision during a Media Tour, Vincent Lai, Director -
Marketing Department, MSI said, "MSI was the first company in the world to
come up with a RoHS compliant VGA Graphic Cards. This shows our concerns for
environmental safety."

Apart from the graphic cards, all the MSI motherboards manufactured for OEM
are already RoHS and WEEE compliant. "By April 2006, we expect to get RoHS
compliance for all our motherboards that will include the ones for
channels," he added.

MSI enjoys a high reputation for its innovations in the construction of
motherboards, graphics cards, optical storage devices, workstations, servers,
slim PCs, barebone systems and IA Products. Of the many environment safety
regulations in the world, MSI has been giving a lot of importance to the
European Union Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) and WEEE (Waste
Electrical and Electronic Equipment) directives for its products.

These directives restrict the presence of certain substances, including lead
(Pb), mercury and many other toxic substances, in electrical and electronic
products offered for sale into the European Union.

The WEEE Directive, effective from August 2005, aims to raise the level of
recycling of electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) and encourages designers
to create products with recycling in mind. A key intention of this law is to
make manufacturers and importers of EEE responsible for meeting the costs of the
collection, treatment and recovery of WEEE.

For manufacturers the world over it has become all the more important to
oblige to these regulations because, from July 1, 2006 countries forming the
European Union will ban all electronic products not complying to RoHS
directives.

A working model of a robot was on display just to demonstrate MSI's capabilities in the field of electronics Vincent Lai, Director Marketing, MSI, addressing journalist from the Asia-Pac region before take a tour of the MSI factory Map indicating MSI's worldwide presence welcomes guest at the KunShan factory in China.jpg One of MSI's three manufacturing facities in China. All the three facilities together covers around 326000 square meters of area

Most motherboard manufacturers are ready to conform to the RoHS and WEEE
directives, but the companies estimate the new requirements will increase
production cost of their boards. This does not include any change in the costs
of the other components used on the board, for example the chipsets. The cost
can go up by 25% to 35% depending on the products.

A line-up of new product launched during the MSI Media Tour 2005 The next few years will see Micro-Star International MSI, investing a lot on strengthening the focus on its Consumer Electronics (CE) and Notebooks product ranges. MSI, known for its motherboard and graphic card business will now aggressively push its IT electronic products, including the Notebooks, MP3 and MP4 players, communication devices and the MEGA PC, more than its component products.  To strengthen its position in the CE and notebook market, MSI recently launched a slew of new products in Shanghai. These are the Megabook series of Notebooks - S260, M635 and S425; the Mega series MP3 players 536 and540, the Mega View series of MP4 players 588. All the products sport slim and elegant design with feature rich with both standard and proprietary technologies.

MSI has a dedicated team working towards achieving full RoHS/WEEE compliance.
The team works with external suppliers to ensure that purchased products are
RoHS compliant. They see that solder used in internal manufacturing operations
are lead-free. They also document data on material composition on all parts and
materials. The team also implements controls to ensure conformance to
environmental compliance standards and recyclability in new product development.

In the field of electronics recycling, Japan took an early lead. The Japanese
Home Electronics Recycling Law mandated that Japanese OEMs be prepared to
collect and recycle air conditioners, refrigerators, televisions and washing
machines by April 2001. In 2001 Japan also updated a decade-old recycling law to
address PCs. Since October 2003, that law has required the recycling of PCs
discarded by both private citizens and businesses.

Considering that China has in the past been a dumping ground for waste
electronics, it is now ready to put its own version of the RoHS directive into
place, dubbed the Regulation for Pollution Control of Electronics Products.
Similar to Europe's RoHS, China's version of the regulations is set to go
into effect concurrently in July of 2006.

China is also apparently developing its own version WEEE legislation, dubbed
Management Regulations on the Recycling of Used Household Electrical Products
and Electronic Products.

Similarly, South Korea also has the legislated electronics recycling,
requiring producers and importers to take back and recycle both their products
and packaging.

NELSON JOHNY(The author was hosted in Shanghai by MSI)