Re: No serial ports

[Matt Ion <soundy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Mark Leuck wrote:
> "Allan Waghalter" <awaghalter@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
> news:ySj_f.9395$%m4.5323@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
>>While shopping for a new laptop in December, I too noticed that most of
>
> them
>
>>did not have a serial port.  I did buy a Dell Latitude D510 for a good
>
> price
>
>>and it has a serial port!  Its very light compared to my older Dell
>
> Inspiron
>
>>7500.  Works great!  Its hard to beat a Dell.  Been using them for years.
>>Good box with superb customer and technical support behind them.
>>Regards,
>>Allan
>
>
> The reason you won't see those ports is due to the Intel and MS standards
> which consider printer and serial ports "legacy devices" and obsolete.

Well they are largely obsolete for most mass-market computers.  What
uses them anymore that's going to be of interest to 99% of the
laptop-buying population?  You almost can't buy a laptop without a
built-in modem (and most would use a PCMCIA modem anyway).  Almost
anything else made now uses USB - PDA sync cables, primarily, I would
expect (I still have an old Palm "universal" crasdle that's a serial
connection, but that too is obsolete, modern Palm PDAs won't work with
it).

There's just very, very little need for serial ports on laptops anymore,
and for that application, anything you can remove to reduce weight,
power consumption, and space is probably going to get removed.


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