This is one of the things that I could not understand in my review of the tablet. Why did they build a PCI express slot into the tablet that over half the perons buying it cannot use or are not aware of. Then add injury it is restricted in what it can do so even if you are aware of it there are only certain things it can be used for and those are very very few.
I think the reason for doing it was because they were being overly cautious. By limiting the BIOS to allow only fully tested devices to work with the tablet, they reduced the potential for technical support calls and any perceived liability for problems.
It's a bit dumb really, when their PC motherboards allow you to do just about anything and people are likely to do just that, so why limit the ability with a tablet, where the buyers are less likely to do unusual things unless they are confident. However, other tablet/notebook manufacturers do similar things.
That said, it is very dissappointing, as there is so much potential in the device, if only Gigabyte had opened up the BIOS for more flexible use. I'm sure a BIOS upgrade would easily allow this, but I doubt that we'll see anything of the sort.
What's also very dissapointing is that Gigabyte have provided almost no technical information (that at least I could find) on what's required to get the EM770W device to work fully, considering it's their only recommended device (other than then EM770). I actually contacted technical suport and all I get back was that there is no built in GPS antenna. Yes I know that, but I wanted to know what aftermarket antenna will actually work, surely they must have done some testing. Unfortunately they appear not to have done any of that, as this is the response I recieved to further probing:
Thank you for your kindly mail again. Please understand since we only guarantee to support 3.5G feature, it doesn't support GPS feature with S1080. Therefore, we only provide the driver which supports 3.5G feature. Sorry for the inconvenience.
And then to add salt to the wound, I can get the GPS in the EM770W to basically work with the Huawei GPS Applet, but I can't find any information on the Huawei site, or anywhere else for that matter, on what antenna is compatible so that the GPS will work.
