Newest dell with serial port?

Simple question...

What's the newest 15 and/or 17in dell business class laptop that still has a serial port?

 

Latitude 14 Rugged.

 

Or any latitude/precision with the right dock, but that isn't a good solution if you need it to be mobile.

 

What about the PR04X dock? That should still be portable.

 

Didn't know that thing existed, doesn't look to be any bigger than the slice batteries, so it should definitely work.

 

I would rather not get a 'rugged' brick of a laptop

.The dock might work...

 

At first I was thinking something like that, the PR02X and it's newer USB3.0 cousin


But jruschme suggested this, the PR04X:

It isn't insanely expensive either: http://www.amazon.com/Dell-E-Series-Extender-Docking-Station/dp/B0042F8N44 and you get PS/2 ports as well as parallel (if that matters).

The latter is entirely transportable, doesn't block any ports on the laptop. Well, it would likely feel huge on a Latitude E7440, but it would fit in any half decent bag, just consider it a big dongle.

If it's to hook up to stationary equipment at your company, the PR02X would work nicely, you could also hook up a power brick to it so that you don't have to worry about battery.

 

Needs to be portable.

I would need to buy a laptop to use the dock, are there any modern-ish ones that have a serial port?

 

whats wrong with a cheap USB adapter?

 

Some equipment might just outright refuse to work with those or might not work properly. If I remember my stuff correctly, you can send an interrupt directly to the CPU through serial, something you can't do through USB, USB is polled by the CPU. This might become a problem with scientific equipment for example. More often than not, it's not the consumer devices that will cause problems with USB to serial adapters, but more niche equipment that needs to operate under very specific conditions.

I'm not sure what you mean by this, wasn't your whole question sparked by the fact that you need to get a new laptop?

EDIT: The Latitude E5510 comes with a built-in serial port. It is a first gen core i device, so you won't get USB 3.0, but it'll still sport decent performance for an everyday notebook.