>If you use a hardware UART of any kind, you will need SOME sort of
>transceiver circuitry. ......  So you need SOMETHING.

Agreed, and the MAX232 family are so very easy to use that it really becomes
a no-brainer to do it this way. There are other similar chips available from
other companies as well, but they are either plug in replacements for the
MAX series, or not so common.

--
http://www.piclist.com hint: The PICList is archived three different
ways.  See http://www.piclist.com/#archives for details.