Hello Peter!

02 May 04 10:07, Peter Knapper wrote to Mike Luther:

 PK> It seems Laptop manufactureres are being PUSHED by M$ into an
 PK> environment where there is no native SERIAL port on their
 PK> machines. If a user wants one of those, they have to install a
 PK> PCMCIA card serial port. The apparent reason for this is that USB
 PK> is now seen by M$ for all serial type connections (and forget all
 PK> existing serial port H/W out there today!).

The push (and design) of USB has come from an industry consortium of
hardware vendors...not some M$ conspiracy.  9 and 25-pin serial ports,
parallel printer ports, AT- and PS/2-style keyboard ports and mouse ports
are all royalty bearing, patented designs of IBM and each vendor must have
some arrangement with IBM in order to provide them.  Besides writing checks
to IBM, notebooks have extra issues with the internal and external real
estate required to support them and the related thermal and
power/battery-life impacts.  If anything, waiting for MS to provide proper
functional OS support for USB devices has done more to slow the adoption
rate than accelerate it.  The hardware has been around since the Win95/NT4
generation of MS OS.

Any perception of recent urgency on MS's part might not be unrelated to the
fact that they now have a certain small form-factor hardware platform of
their own to peddle, too.

.\\ike

--- GoldED 2.50+