Assisted in this case just means they use cell tower triangulation to improve cold start speed. On an iPhone 3GS, it is quite fast to acquire even from cold - slower if you have no cell coverage, about the same as a Garmin handheld lets say. Look up the specs at apple.com/ipad. GPS engines are so cheap these days there is almost no excuse not to put it in everything. A GPS module (apply power, start reading NMEA sentences) is around $30 one at a time retail, my guess is less than $10 in any kind of quantity.