Re: Why are laptops no longer made with serial ports?

From: Pieter Litchfield (pvcl_at_*nospam*plitch.com)
Date: 06/30/04 

Date: Wed, 30 Jun 2004 10:38:20 GMT

This is exactly right. In addition:
1. USB ports are physically smaller than serial (db-9) connectors, so mount
easier on a laptop case.
2. USB devices can be easy plug-n-play under windows. Serial cannot.
3. USB can handle more bandwidth, therefor a wide variety of devices -
never try a disk drive on a serial port! The same USB port cana be used to
hook up and use a printer, modem, disk drive, etc.

So there are a lot of good reasons to have a USB port, especially on a thin
laptop. You can get either a card with a serial port or a card with a USB
port for your desktop PC, so setting one up for USB GPS should be no
problem. So now we only need to focus on laptops with only USB ports as the
"problem." They are around because of reasons above. Most laptop users
will NOT be using GPS but will communicate with a bunch of other devices via
USB. For most ordinary business users, RS-232 and (to a lesser degree)
Centronics ports are dead. Perhaps we should speculate on "why do GPS
makers insist on RS-232 ports instead of USB?" Part of the answer, I
suspect, is because many legacy devices like autopilots still use rs-232
connected serial ports. I know my DGPS beacon receiver does.

In any case, if you are really upset about the lack of serial ports on a
laptop, you can always get a serial port on a card to stick in a slot.
Peronally, I'd find the right USB serial - USB dongle to work with mine.

"Seagull" <seagull@aracnet.com> wrote in message
news:cbt4l60nhk@enews4.newsguy.com...
> Bonzo <nobody@spam.com> wrote:
> >
> > Can anyone think of any product other than GPS that you can buy
> > at best buy that still uses RS232?
>
> That's not the point. The point is that there's a huge install base of
> industrial, commercial and consumer equipment that speaks RS232 and
> has for decades. That cannot be replaced overnight. RS232 will need
> to exist as long as there is a significant amount of technology in
> use in the world that depends on it.
>
>
> Cheers,
> -+JLS
>
> --
> \ carpe cavy!
> seagull @ aracnet.com \
> http://www.aracnet.com/~seagull/ \ (seize the guinea pig!)

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