Review on 🔌 StarTech.com ExpressCard 1 Port RS232 Serial Adapter Card: Fast Data Transfer with 16950 UART - EC1S952 by Brian Finley

As a networker it is important for you to have a serial port as it is the method you use to connect your console to your main network devices. As laptops have gotten thinner and lighter over the years, the somewhat bulky serial ports have been eliminated entirely, and it's rare to find a decent laptop with a built-in serial port these days. The most common way to get a COM port. The port is used to receive USB-to-serial adapters, commonly referred to as dongles. Although these wrenches work very well, they lose their effectiveness with repeated use and gradual wear, especially if you keep taking them off and tightening them up before eventually having to replace them entirely. I've tried cheap keys and more expensive ones that can cost up to $30, eventually either the key or the rollover cable needs to be replaced. So this time I decided to try something different and bought a Startech Expresscard RS232 serial adapter. I have to say that this product works well and since I don't plan on removing the ExpressCard anytime soon I don't expect to have to deal with the wear and tear issues I've had with keys. This device creates a virtual COM port on your computer, allowing you to seamlessly connect to your network devices. Behaving more like my own serial port means I don't have to worry about the length of the cables coming from the dongles and now I have all my USB ports available. This is a really great product, however due to some initial installation issues I have to take a star off my rating. This serial adapter card is not very user friendly. As another reviewer noted, as soon as you insert an ExpressCard into the slot, it attempts to automatically install drivers for the device. This will inevitably crash and you will have to install the driver manually. To my dismay, installing the drivers manually proved to be a daunting task. Neither the drivers provided on the minidisk nor the drivers provided on Startech's website installed properly, resulting in a Code 10 "This device will not start" error. Restarting the computer and reinstalling the drivers didn't help. I ended up calling Startech support and the only way to get the driver working on my laptop (Dell Latitude E6420) is to install an old legacy driver. Aside from the issues installing and running the driver, this device works great and I would highly recommend it to people looking for a more reliable alternative to dongles.