The Dymo is on the serial port of an older puter that doesn’t have a working USB port. I tried stuffing a USB card into the puter, and it refuses to work, too, so I said “Nantucket” and simply used the regular serial port.

Both laser printers are on the same computer, with the color laser using the parallel port, and the b/w laser using the serial port.

One of my puters has a mouse on a serial port, too. As a rule, I prefer bus port ^H^H^H PS/2 port mouses, but it’s a nice mouse.

I’ve got a digitizing tablet, not used frequently, but when I need it, I’ve got it, that requires a serial port. MicroCornucopia once published a nice story on using a bidirectional parallel port for data acquisition, but I can’t find it any more, and without that article, regular serial ports are SO much easier to use when you’re building data acquisition hardware.

It’s awfully cheap to include a serial port, and when you need one, it makes a BIG difference. Sorta like token ring. Most computer users have never heard of it, but if you’re trying to connect a Mac to an existing token ring network, you’re SOL.