My new laptop does not have a serial port however it does have a USB port - what do I do?

Many new laptop computers and some desktop models are now being shipped
without RS232 serial ports and instead are equipped with USB ports. Because
of this we are often asked how to deal with this situation. The most common
question is "Can WinWedge (or any other serial communications software)
communicate over a USB port instead of a RS232 serial port?"

The quick answer:
Strictly speaking, the answer is "No" however you can still use WinWedge (or
any other serial communications software) to communicate with RS232 serial
devices through a USB port as long as you get a RS232 to USB converter.
There are a number of companies that sell USB to RS232 converters as well as
other add-on multi port serial adapters that connect to a PC through the USB
port. All of these converters and add-on adapters are supplied with a
Windows "device driver" that gets installed in your PC. The device driver
software causes the PC to treat the USB to RS232 converter as if it were an
actual RS232 serial port installed on the motherboard of the computer.
Single port USB to RS232 converters are commonly available at most computer
supply stores for under $20.00 and multi port add-on adapters are also
widely available at reasonable prices. In fact TAL Technologies carries a
full line of high quality add-on multi port serial adapters that connect to
a PC through a USB port. For more information on the adapters that we sell,
please visit: http://www.taltech.com/TALtech_web/products/rs232.html
All of these products will work just fine with WinWedge or any other Windows
based serial communications software.

More Information:
Although USB stands for "Universal Serial Bus", the USB interface does not
work anything at all like a standard RS232 serial port. Like RS232 serial
ports, the USB ports on a PC are designed for interfacing external devices,
however any device that is designed to connect to a USB port must come with
a Windows "device driver" that essentially informs the operating system when
the device is connected or disconnected to the PC and also provides a
software interface to the device. A device driver is basically a small
software program that provides a standard software interface to a particular
hardware device. What this means is that practically any device could be
designed to connect to a USB port as long as the device is supplied with a
driver. The only problem with the USB interface design is that there is no
way to simply open up a USB port and communicate with any device the same
way that you can with a RS232 serial port. Any software that communicates
with a particular USB device must communicate with the device through the
driver that is supplied with the USB device. Fortunately, in the case of USB
to RS232 converters, the drivers that come with them all emulate a standard
RS232 communications port so you can use the USB to RS232 converters to
communicate with any RS232 serial device using any standard Windows based
serial communications software.