There is few laptop has serial port, even most of the desktop only include one serial port these days.

Dell used to carry a Business laptop which got one serial port, not sure they still carry these. Maybe some special order can be placed for large orders.

We have a few Toshiba laptops which doesn't have a serial port at all, so our lab guy always use USB to serial converters for product tests, so far we got no issue at all. 

Here are a USB to serial products we found working good and offer on our online store:
http://www.auelectronics.com/products/adp-usb-232.html

This PL2303 based USB/Serial converter comes with a power LED (which is a hard to find feature, it is kind of dim though, I personally like it since my FTDI based converter is so bright, it hurts eyes sometime.) and works as fast as a motherboard integrated serial port. 

We have found that FTDI chip based USB to serial port are really slow on all of our MCU communication application, such as bootloading. FTDI USB converter works, but only got about 1/4 speed of a pl-2303 based USB/Serial converter. 

Anybody knows why? We got both products in the lab, the technician who got FTDI USB/Serial  converters constantly complain the speed is slow comparing with the pl-2303 USB/Serial converters. Could it just be a driver issue.

We got a tutorial on install driver for FTDI USB/Serial converter here:
http://www.auelectronics.com/Q9.htm


 Funny N.
Au Group Electronics, http://www.AuElectronics.com
http://www.AuElectronics.com/products
http://augroups.blogspot.com/
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