Micro-Star International Co. Ltd., one of the world"s top makers of computer motherboards, has been sued by a Vermont company seeking class-action status over claims that MSI"s boards use a defective technology and are prone to fail. The suit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court last Thursday by Electronic Connection Services Corp., a hardware and software services company, claims that MSI has knowingly used capacitors, devices used to regulate the power supply to microchips, that can leak and cause motherboards to short-circuit. A spokesman for MSI in Taiwan could not be immediately reached for comment.
In its lawsuit, Electronic Connection Services said that MSI has known for years that its capacitors were made with an improperly-formulated electrolyte solution and that they are prone to leak or even explode. "The motherboards are of such a low quality and are so defective that MSI knows they consistently fail and that consumers may lose massive amounts of information, time and money upon the failure of each motherboard," the suit said. The lawsuit cited industry magazines reporting as far back as late 2002 that manufacturers were having problems with motherboards from a number of companies that exhibited problems with leaky or exploding capacitors.