I Hope ASUS fixed the grounding issue with the charger.

Blairware

Senior Member
Nov 12, 2009
937
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Wake Forest, NC
I just hope (pray is more like it) that Asus made the stupid USB proprietary charging cable longer than the ridiculously short one with the original Transformer. The goofy thing was like 3 feet long, could barely reach a tabletop or desktop from a wall outlet. And for anyone just getting a TF for the first time, note that you need USB 3.0 spec extension cables to extend the charging/sync cable that ships with the Transformer Prime; 2.0 would not charge since the pin-outs are different. My cheat? I uses a regular ac extension cord, and plugged the charging inverter (transformer?) into the regular ac extension cord, that way I could extend it as long as I liked, with no concern about leakage, signal loss etc...

Oh yeah! One BIG THING: I hope that the Prime does not have the quirk where the power supply, when oriented "right side up" (plugged in with the ASUS logo readable) has a grounding issue like the Transformer TF101 did. Anyone who had one might know what I mean. If you lightly touched the metallic sections when charging with the cable oriented one way, the thing had an electric "Buzz" running through it, like a fine vibration. Not dangerous to people, I would think, but when first noticed it I was seriously concerned. I did a bunch of research on it, and basically, if you flipped the charger around in outlet, it went away. All they had to do was make one blade of the plug wider, but perhaps grounding is different in some markets, so they weren't able to do that.

They had several revisions for it, but never fixed it, as far as I know, and I had one of the last serial numbers.

All I know is you take a reasonable durable electronic device, but one where there is no "Frame" or "Chassis" because they wanted it to be ultra slim, and what they do is solder components onto a board that IS the chassis. That, along with a nice strong piece of Corning Gorilla Glass, and you have a reasonably rigid, strong, yet extremely thin device. I think they outright stole the process from Apple's Mac Book Air, and did it first with the Zen Book (Another device I am lusting after, but a bit short on the cashola to be grabbing anytime soon, LOL!)

My concern, if you want to call it that, is that improperly grounding a "durable" but in other ways "sensitive" grouping of electronic components, so much so that the user can literally feel the stray voltage, can not be all that good for the components. I mean, it's not exactly ZAPPING you when you touch it,but it feels downright creepy.. and I do not like it. I think, f my new Asus does this as badly as my old one, I may give them a heard time about it. But I will not be shipping my unit in for inspection - No freaking way. If they want to reproduce it, they can just grab one of their own and work on it. Just don't stand in a puddle during testing, okay guys?
 

monkeyboywa

Senior Member
Dec 3, 2009
86
7
0
I just hope (pray is more like it) that Asus made the stupid USB proprietary charging cable longer than the ridiculously short one with the original Transformer. The goofy thing was like 3 feet long, could barely reach a tabletop or desktop from a wall outlet. And for anyone just getting a TF for the first time, note that you need USB 3.0 spec extension cables to extend the charging/sync cable that ships with the Transformer Prime; 2.0 would not charge since the pin-outs are different. My cheat? I uses a regular ac extension cord, and plugged the charging inverter (transformer?) into the regular ac extension cord, that way I could extend it as long as I liked, with no concern about leakage, signal loss etc...

Oh yeah! One BIG THING: I hope that the Prime does not have the quirk where the power supply, when oriented "right side up" (plugged in with the ASUS logo readable) has a grounding issue like the Transformer TF101 did. Anyone who had one might know what I mean. If you lightly touched the metallic sections when charging with the cable oriented one way, the thing had an electric "Buzz" running through it, like a fine vibration. Not dangerous to people, I would think, but when first noticed it I was seriously concerned. I did a bunch of research on it, and basically, if you flipped the charger around in outlet, it went away. All they had to do was make one blade of the plug wider, but perhaps grounding is different in some markets, so they weren't able to do that.

They had several revisions for it, but never fixed it, as far as I know, and I had one of the last serial numbers.

All I know is you take a reasonable durable electronic device, but one where there is no "Frame" or "Chassis" because they wanted it to be ultra slim, and what they do is solder components onto a board that IS the chassis. That, along with a nice strong piece of Corning Gorilla Glass, and you have a reasonably rigid, strong, yet extremely thin device. I think they outright stole the process from Apple's Mac Book Air, and did it first with the Zen Book (Another device I am lusting after, but a bit short on the cashola to be grabbing anytime soon, LOL!)

My concern, if you want to call it that, is that improperly grounding a "durable" but in other ways "sensitive" grouping of electronic components, so much so that the user can literally feel the stray voltage, can not be all that good for the components. I mean, it's not exactly ZAPPING you when you touch it,but it feels downright creepy.. and I do not like it. I think, f my new Asus does this as badly as my old one, I may give them a heard time about it. But I will not be shipping my unit in for inspection - No freaking way. If they want to reproduce it, they can just grab one of their own and work on it. Just don't stand in a puddle during testing, okay guys?
you''d think with the new product...with the safety of ground vs hot....they would have fixed it ..but NOOOO....i felt this "vibration thingy" last night and thought something was wrong. I know i have dirty power in my house...and it doesnt do it while plugged into the USB of my computer....

Glad to see this was an earlier issue and although i thought i moved to different sockets in the house..i cant honestly say i truly "tested" flipping the plug around. i'll try that when i get home.

ps. it's retarded that the only way to charge is via the plug. 12v. really? oh and charging my tablet yesterday after picking it up and opening at work revealed a dead tablet...the plug was super hot after charging for about 4 hours...
 

JoeyLe

Senior Member
Aug 29, 2010
506
107
0
I just hope (pray is more like it) that Asus made the stupid USB proprietary charging cable longer than the ridiculously short one with the original Transformer. The goofy thing was like 3 feet long, could barely reach a tabletop or desktop from a wall outlet. And for anyone just getting a TF for the first time, note that you need USB 3.0 spec extension cables to extend the charging/sync cable that ships with the Transformer Prime; 2.0 would not charge since the pin-outs are different. My cheat? I uses a regular ac extension cord, and plugged the charging inverter (transformer?) into the regular ac extension cord, that way I could extend it as long as I liked, with no concern about leakage, signal loss etc...

Oh yeah! One BIG THING: I hope that the Prime does not have the quirk where the power supply, when oriented "right side up" (plugged in with the ASUS logo readable) has a grounding issue like the Transformer TF101 did. Anyone who had one might know what I mean. If you lightly touched the metallic sections when charging with the cable oriented one way, the thing had an electric "Buzz" running through it, like a fine vibration. Not dangerous to people, I would think, but when first noticed it I was seriously concerned. I did a bunch of research on it, and basically, if you flipped the charger around in outlet, it went away. All they had to do was make one blade of the plug wider, but perhaps grounding is different in some markets, so they weren't able to do that.

They had several revisions for it, but never fixed it, as far as I know, and I had one of the last serial numbers.

All I know is you take a reasonable durable electronic device, but one where there is no "Frame" or "Chassis" because they wanted it to be ultra slim, and what they do is solder components onto a board that IS the chassis. That, along with a nice strong piece of Corning Gorilla Glass, and you have a reasonably rigid, strong, yet extremely thin device. I think they outright stole the process from Apple's Mac Book Air, and did it first with the Zen Book (Another device I am lusting after, but a bit short on the cashola to be grabbing anytime soon, LOL!)

My concern, if you want to call it that, is that improperly grounding a "durable" but in other ways "sensitive" grouping of electronic components, so much so that the user can literally feel the stray voltage, can not be all that good for the components. I mean, it's not exactly ZAPPING you when you touch it,but it feels downright creepy.. and I do not like it. I think, f my new Asus does this as badly as my old one, I may give them a heard time about it. But I will not be shipping my unit in for inspection - No freaking way. If they want to reproduce it, they can just grab one of their own and work on it. Just don't stand in a puddle during testing, okay guys?
I also have this with my HP laptop, which also has an aluminium shell. I think that is normal.

EDIT: My Desire Z (G2) also had this, pretty sure that is normal.
 
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lonswain

New member
Apr 25, 2011
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Indianapolis
The Prime "buzz"

Mine definitely has the grounding issue / buzz. Inverting the plug alleviates the problem but you'd think design measures could be taken to eliminate the problem.