StarTech.com 1 ft. USB to RS232 Serial DB9 Adapter Cable with COM Port Retention - Up to 920 kpbs USB A to DB9 Serial Adapter , TAA (ICUSB232PRO)

We use this with multiple laptops that download from GPS units and need to be reliable and simple. Telling people how to use Device Manager to find where the USB-Serial adapter went doesn't cut it. I can now configure the machines once and know it'll work every time. It installed perfectly on Windows XP, Windows 7 32-bit and Windows 7 64-bit. The fact that it arrives packed in an anti-static bag inside a cardboard box makes it clear it's not the typical cheap blister pack unit.

Be sure to check your COMPUTER and the signature pad you are ordering to make sure it's the correct one. Once we got the correct signature pad, this works perfectly. Easy to hook up...just find a USB port on your computer!

Just what we needed...easy to setup and easy to use .... All around a good buy. Good pricing for each unit too.

Worked as expected, I like the great quality look!

With my new motherboard I no longer had any com ports and only USB ports. Bought the ICUSB232Pro from [...] and this USB to RS232 Serial Adapter Cable did the trick and ended all my problems. Works great in both Windows 7 Home Premium and Professional in 32 and 64 bit. Comes with drivers or just go to their web site and download their latest.

EDITED: After a lot of investigation, I discovered that this device IS supported directly in the Linux OS and no driver installation is needed, but it is NOT intuitive to figure out how to use it for the average user. I wrote to StarTech with decent user information and asked them to post better instructions on their website, but they never did. The unit works fine, but I only raise my rating to a 3 due to lack of user information. To install this device all you need to do is to plug the adapter into the USB port and then do a "dmesg" command and look at the last few lines of the output to see the install results.WAS:Linux support (sic) consists of a Makefile and driver source code specific to an ANCIENT (March 2004) Linux kernel (2.4) for Red Hat Linux versions 7.3, 8, and 9. These are absolutely obsolete. It may run on Windows, but any mention of Linux needs to be either removed or severely qualified.

I used this serial adapter to support legacy systems. It works well under both Windows 7 and Virtual Box software. I often use Windows XP in a Virtual Box virtual machine (VM). You can attach this USB device to the VM. This allows me to run legacy software that will only work with XP and use a serial port.

I ordered two of them, one of them doesn't work. Normally Startech stuff is good but 50% failure rate on serial converters isn't good.