X300 GPS Lag (With Verizon WWAN Card)

[elmokiddo]

Hey Everyone,
Yesterday I received by 6478-1JU notebook and I had a pretty hard time getting the system to start picking up a GPS signal.

I would start the ThinkVantage GPS software and it would search for about 30-40 seconds, after which it would say it could not get a signal. If I tried to search again, it only searched for 5 seconds or so, and would give the same error. After trying a dozen times, I finally got it to pick up a signal and now it is pretty consistent in getting one. I am afraid to turn on WWAN by accident and have to repeat the process of trying for an hour to get a signal.

At first I thought it was just because it was the first time getting a signal, but at some points it would say it had a signal, I would restart the computer and 5 minutes later in the exact same position, it would not be able to get one (clear view of the sky).

My problem is that when I do have a signal, the GPS receiver is only sending a NMEA signal every 5 seconds. Regardless of if it has 5 sats or 7 sats. (typically it sees 9 sats and is using 5-7)

I tried setting the driver to different baud rates, as well as different baud rates in software and it didn't help. I also tried using Streets and Trips 2007, GPSDiag, and GPSUtility and all of these are only getting signals every 5 seconds...so doesn't seem to be software.

If anyone with the GPS built in could download GPSDiag (free) and see how often they are getting a NMEA message, I would appreciate it. The line looks like this:

$GPRMC,043034.
Where the numbers are the UTC time, in this case 4:30:34 am

Edit: I had a signal - restarted the system and now it is gone with ThinkVantage GPS Enabler being useless... any ideas?? Have any of you had better luck???

I feel 5 seconds is unacceptable, if you are driving you can easily miss a turn if the software isn't updated fast enough, I tested the GPS with Streets and Trips and it was way too slow to be useful

[Thecla]

I haven't tried the GPS much (with an equivalent X300 to the one you have) but it has worked with a clear view of the sky and with a WWAN connection. The GPS takes about 30 secs to connect and I also seem to get 5 sec delays with GPSdiag e.g. cut and pasted from my GPSdiag output:

$GPRMC,052312.
$GPRMC,052317.
$GPRMC,052322.
$GPRMC,052327.

So maybe that's really how it works?

[akao]

Wow, that's pretty bad. Even the standard 1Hz can be annoying for navigation.