[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] TheWerewolf:
Got my Prime on Thursday and sure enough - no GPS. No satellites at all. Tried the firmware update - the apps etc... Nada.

A couple of quick comments though before I press on..

To all the people who are reporting that their unit works - and thus are arguing that the rest of us are overreacting, looking at the numbers here, more than half of the people here are reporting either outright failure, or impaired functionality. Just because yours works doen't mean they all work - or that people who have units that don't work shouldn't be upset.

Just because YOU don't use the GPS function doesn't mean no one else does or no one else should. More than that though, whether you use it or not, it's a feature (and a major one - it's an entire chipset) and it's not working reliably across many reports. Arguing that 'it's not important' is missing the point - you PAID for that feature. If it doesn't work, you got a defective unit. It's like buy a pair of sneakers and when you get them home, discover there's no laces. You can always get your own - but you paid for the laces and they didn't include them. You got ripped off. Taking the attitude that it's not THAT big a deal makes you a lousy consumer.

BTW, there's a growing set of apps that need GPS info - like in the area of augmented reality - like standing in a city and looking at your screen to see what restaurants are right around you - that rely on GPS.

Special note to joepic - the reason you got yelled at is because you didn't actually provide useful information relevent to the discussion at hand. You saw 'GPS' and decided to 'help' by quoting your own information. Problem is, many of the apps on that list are device specific, or just aren't relevent to the issue here. More isn't always better.

Now, onto the GPS issue.

I have a Viewsonic ViewPad 7 and its GPS locks on anywhere - even in the middle of a building - even with WiFi and 3G turned off. In fact, I'm in my livingroom right now on the second floor of a concrete apartment away from the main window and the VP7 has a good solid 5-9 satellite lock and the Prime is showing 0.

Most modern GPS chipsets can do that. My QStarz pocket GPSes have managed to track all the from Canada to England in flight and in the airports. This is the level of response I've come to expect at the minimum. So, 0 sats is clearly not good enough and that's what I'm getting now on the Prime. It shouldn't take 30 minutes outside in a clear field to get the first fix, AGPS or not. 5 minutes TTFF is considered slow these days. I don't know if it's software or hardware, but clearly, there's an issue here. The only 'good' news is that it looks like it's widespread... however, one thing that has me worried is that the big box retailors haven't got theirs yet - Amazon doesn't count because you might be buying from Amazon when in fact it's being sold from someone using Amazon as a store front. Unless it says 'shipped from Amazon', it's not really from them. I have a baaaad feeling that all of these early delivery units are from an early batch. If the ones from Staples, Office Depot, Best Buy.. etc, have the same problem, then it's real.

Finally, one request - try to keep on topic... please. This is fairly important and it's frustrating to have to wade through 4 pages of arguing over whose sources for WiFi tests are 'best'. Those of us who have the GPS issue are looking for corroboration of a problem - and hopefully a solution. We're already pretty frustrated. This doesn't help.

Cheers.