Gigabyte responds
We spoke to the head of Gigabyte's UK operations - John Hung - to get his take on this dissing missive and he didn't seem much impressed with ASRock. "We don't see ASRock as a competitor as we focus on quality and reliability," he riposted. Miao!
When we asked if there was any validity in ASRock's claims, Hung said: "We think it's necessary; a comparison shows the benefit. We don't think it's wasteful as it's all recyclable." No further verification of these claims was offered.
In the end, Mr. Hung seemed to wonder what ASRock's problem was. "People try to innovate - it's ultimately down to opinions and everyone's entitled to one," he said. "You're already seeing people following our lead and I'm sure you'll see other people using the copper design."
Ultimately this seems to be a bit of a storm in a teacup as people will still need to make up their own minds about the necessity of Gigabyte's extra copper usage and it will likely take more than a single email from another motherboard vendor to enable them to do that.
It goes without saying that environmental matters are a key concern, not least to the channel with WEEE and RoHS regualtions to adhere to. But while we all try to do our bit, few if any of us are free from reproach when it comes our relationship with the environment.
This public spat between ASUS and Gigabyte has been ongoing for some time now, but as far as we know this is the first time that ASUS' little sister has pulled out her claws and dug them in. In HEXUS' experience, for a company such as ASRock to publicly attack Gigabyte in this way is not the usual, reserved Taiwanese way of going about things; so maybe there's more than competitive business practice in all this than the meets the eye...
In any event, by doing so, ASRock has put its own environmental practices in the spotlight, not least from our own Nick Haywood, who has his own thoughts on the email that you can read on the next page.
