Alright, first thing’s first: What do these adapters do is make it so that your USB peripherals will interface with your old-style laptop. It’s pretty simple, really. If you have an external hard drive for instance that only allows for USB interface (just about all you see these days), you’re not going to be able to use it without some type of adapter. Keep in mind, however, that bus speeds over an RS232 USB adapter are not going to be what you usually expect from a solid USB 2.0 connection. We won’t really worry about that, however. You get what you get when you have an old laptop, really. If you really want blazing fast USB speeds, you’ll just have to upgrade. 
Prices for a USB RS232 converter are pretty steady across the board: Most of these will run $15-$20, and are available at all sorts of stores that you would normally expect. Fry’s Electronics is a great source of these, but barring that you probably could even find them at Best Buy. If you can’t do that, try for the usual suspects online such as Amazon (see the links below this post for easy shopping), our old friend Tiger, and places such as New Egg. You’re really not going to have to search for long for these, trust me on that.
I honestly hope that this post has answered some questions about how to set up a simple USB RS232 conversion adapter. Best of luck.
Shopping:
Related posts:
]]>