[random_guy7531]

while ive never had a bad experience with my usb to serial on my laptop, i can say that usually problems can occur when the actual converter is not usb 2.0 compatible. while the computer may have usb 2.0 ports, sometimes the converter is not usb 2.0 compatible (i learned this from the lonestar regional, as another team had the same problem). Our team doesnt use them very often, as the company laptops the mentors have all have db9 ports as do the desktops. Either way, we write so much code that it takes a good 1-2 minutes to load it all even on a db-9 port, so i dont even want to think about using a converter, esp. one that isnt usb2.0.