I need to have two way communication between a PIC microcontroller and a
laptop computer. I only know of two ways to do this:

1) Over a serial (RS-232) connection.
2) Over a USB connection.

I have successfully sent data back and forth between a dsPIC and my laptop
using the UART module, but it's an annoyance to have to use a serial-to-USB
adaptor and working with serial ports on windows is not fun. Also, if other
people ever decide to duplicate my project, they would have to buy an
expensive adaptor as I've had to do.

Everyone has USB ports on their computers, so this seems like a good option.
But I really don't know *anything* about USB. Is using the USB module on a
PIC difficult? Would it be hard to write a windows program to recieve and
send data?

In your opinion, is it worth taking the time to learn about how USB works
and how to implement it in my project? It just seems like no one is using
serial anymore, are serial communications becoming obsolete, and is it time
to move on to USB?

Thanks for your input.
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