Asus has never been firm with an exact release date for the Eee Pad Transformer Prime, instead giving us a nebulous “December” time frame. But if computer retailer extraordinaire Newegg is to be believed, the quad-core tablet will be landing on the 8th, just a week and a half from now. You can already pre-order the Transformer Prime on that website and others.

It has to be said that retailers have a nasty habit of pulling release dates out of thin air, but Newegg isn’t known to be a particularly guilty party in that respect. Early December also lines up with other rumors we’ve heard of the much-anticipated tablet’s landing. Presumably you’ll be able to buy the Transformer Prime’s $150 keyboard attachment at the same time, though again, that’s unconfirmed.

The Transformer Prime will launch running Android Honeycomb, but Asus has been steadfast in promising a timely update to Ice Cream Sandwich. There’s no date associated with the upgrade, though an Asus executive did hint that the software may come before the end of the year – that’s be a nice Christmas present from Taiwan. If Nvidia has anything to do with it, the very first quad-core Tegra 3 device will get the update sooner rather than later. They showed off an early build of Ice Cream Sandwich on their official YouTube channel.

It’s worth noting that December 8th is also the latest rumored date for a pair of high-profile Verizon phones, the Motorola DROID 4 and the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. It may end up being a very big Thursday for Android.

[device id=1934] [via Engadget]