i to have been looking at these,

has anyone tried using one to prograam a Siemens HiPath exchange or Gardtec control panels?

Siemens have fussy requirements needing IRQ's so many usb to suedo serial port dongles won't work with them.

i carry an old compaq laptop for programming and pdfs, nothing fancy but quite solid and robust. has the invaluable serial port. as it happens neighbour gave it to me when he upgraded, all it needed was a new keyboard which cost

Tbh Arf it's getting annoying that the majority of laptops these days come without legacy sockets like Serial/Parallel, I for one need a serial

port as it's used by a lot of devices that I use.

RE Usb serial adaptors, i've not had much luck with them as they tend to allocate an IRQ out of a normal

com port range and specific applications will only work with those ranges, not to mention timing/baud rate issues. However, some of these "mini" laptops have a card slot, be it PCMCIA/ExpressCard which you can get serial cards for which work a lot better imho and function as a proper serial port as they are dedicated hardware, not software devices like most usb peripherals.

Tbh Arf it's getting annoying that the majority of laptops these days come without legacy sockets like Serial/Parallel, I for one need a serial

port as it's used by a lot of devices that I use.

RE Usb serial adaptors, i've not had much luck with them as they tend to allocate an IRQ out of a normal

com port range and specific applications will only work with those ranges, not to mention timing/baud rate issues. However, some of these "mini" laptops have a card slot, be it PCMCIA/ExpressCard which you can get serial cards for which work a lot better imho and function as a proper serial port as they are dedicated hardware, not software devices like most usb peripherals.

That never occurred to me. thanks DaleR.

We have just bought the EEE pc 1000H, very good so far, we have just ordered a new USB/Serial adapter that apparantly is the best because we too have had issues connecting with some adaptors to the Galaxys.

Why dont Galaxy do USB or laptops do Serial, it all seems a bit backward as i see Menvier do USB now?

Agreed.

You could use an ethernet module for them (except the early 2's and the 16's)