Pros: Works with BSD Unix. I have this showing up in FreeNAS as a secondary serial port, which I can then use in VirtualBox.

Cons: None so far.

Pros: It's cheap

Cons: The installation process for the drivers supplied on the included CD is not good. I've never, ever, had to boot Windows 7 (64 bit) and press F8 to "Disable driver signature enforcement". I've installed drivers that weren't approved by Microsoft for various other devices and never had this nonsense.

Another issue was the Dell XPS 420 I'm installing this in gave a BIOS error "Error Allocating I/O Bar for PCI Device" when booting up. Once I removed the card, the BIOS error went away.

Other Thoughts: To avoid PCI bus contention issues in the old traditional PCI slots on this computer, I'll probably look for a PCI express serial card from StarTech, but man those are expensive ($39)

Manufacturer Response:

Dear customer,

This card has been on the market for years and is based on a well known chipset (Netmos 9865 Chipset).

If your PC has PCI slot, most likely you have upgraded your OS from Windows 98SE or XP to Windows 7?

From our experience, in order to resolve the issue the first thing we recommend our customer to do is to check the motherboard manufacturer's website for any possible BIOS, firmware, update. Old motherboards and new OS such as Windows 7 sometimes don't get along. An upgrade on firmware might resole the issue.

Our technical support team is available to help 9am-5pm M-F. Feel free to contact us during those business hours at support@sybausa.com

We are more than happy to provide all of our customers with a prompt exchange whenever a product becomes defective.

SYBA offers an on-line RMA form, the user can easily fill out the form and submit it for a quick RMA return and exchange. It is SYBA's policy to answer all customer inquiries within 24 hours (M-F)

Thank you for purchasing one of our products, and for leaving us your valuable feedback. We value all positive and negative feedback.

Regards, SYBA CST 10082012

Pros: If it works for you, I'm sure it's great. It didn't for me.

Cons: Read a review that it worked great with Win 7, but I didn't find that to be the case. It failed to install with the driver installer being very vague about why ("Installation is aborted. Click exit to close"). Contacted tech support and within two days they sent me more drivers that didn't work and then told me to try again and maybe my card is defective. After independent research, I found that it works if I disable the Driver Signature Requirement at boot-up because the card's drivers aren't certified. More to do with Win 7 than the card, but if it doesn't work, it doesn't work; drivers should be certified.

Other Thoughts: Really wish new computers came with serial ports still. That would be nice.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Customer,

We are sorry to hear that one of our products did not meet your expectations. the products driver is still pending certification by Microsoft. Before we get it digitally signed, user can easily by pass the digital signature warning screen by granting permission to continue. Also, this driver issue can be avoided by temporally disabling UPNP in your systems settings to prevent windows from installing an incorrect driver.

We are also sorry that our technician was unable to provide you with better drivers/support when needed. This is an area that will keep improving with the cooperation of our customers.

Please feel free to contact us if you ever need assistance installing one of our products. We will gladly provide you with solutions within 24 hrs Monday - Friday
Regards, Syba Customer Service GR 04192012

Pros: This card is inexpensive and flat out works perfectly. After reading the other reviews here I figured this was worth trying. Neither of my recent ASUS boards have a serial port and I have several pieces of communications equipment and accompanying programming software that don't take kindly to serial port emulation through the USB interface.

The OS that I use on these workstations is Windows XP/SP2 and the installation was painless. I ran the setup program for the software driver from the accompanying CD before physically installing the PCI card. Then I shut down, unplugged the power supply to remove all voltage from the motherboard, and installed the serial port PCI card. When I started up the system I could see the little taskbar icon indicating that the system was busy detecting the new hardware and was surprised when the icon disappeared after about 15 seconds. Without any prompts for action by me XP installed the correct driver and enabled the hardware without rebooting.

Cons: None

Other Thoughts: The equipment and software I am using is very fussy but it all works perfectly through this serial port card. The driver is digitally signed by Microsoft and in the device manager property tab you have many more options than you would see with the default XP driver. You can assign any com port speed and com port number your equipment might need. In my case, Windows XP assigned com port 4 even though no other ports exist on my system and that satisfied all my software.

Given the incredibly inexpensive price and the perfect functionality of the driver and the card this is a no brainer if you need a serial port interface. It's cheaper than serial-to-USB converters and it appears to be perfectly compatible with devices that often struggled with integrated motherboard com ports.

I'm very pleased with this product and wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to anyone. As usual, Newegg processed my order on Tuesday and the package arrived on Thursday. That's why I do business with them! :O)

Pros: Drivers worked fine on Windows 2003 Server R2

Cons: Would have been happier if I didn't have to buy it.

Other Thoughts: For some reason my weather station would not communicate with the software via the serial port tied to the header of my new Asus M4A78T-E motherboard. Not about to return the motherboard over this, as the issue could have been the weather station software. So the PCI card was a reasonably priced solution.

No issues with having to switch slots like some others have written about. Got lucky on the first shot. Now the weather station software and the weather statioin are playing nice, so I'm happy too

Pros: Does the job. I used this to connect my APC Smart-UPS 1400 to my new X58 build, since my motherboard does not have a serial port. The Smart-UPS uses "smart signaling" that is said not to work correctly with serial-to-USB converters. The serial port on this card was detected automatically by Windows 7 x64, and the APC software communicates with the UPS with no problems.

Cons: The cake is a lie.

Other Thoughts: EVGA X58 SLI LE (E757) motherboard

Pros: Cheap, Very easy to install with Windows 7-never even put the driver cd in!

Cons: none at all

Other Thoughts: I put this card in my HP to telnet into cisco devices for training and it does exactly what i need it to.

Pros: Easy to install, fast detection,

Cons: none

Pros: PLUG AND PLAY PICK THE RIGHT DRIVER YOUR GOOD TO GO.

Cons: NONE.

Other Thoughts: GREAT PRICE.

Pros: These allow you to add serial port capability to newer computers that don't come with Serial ports. It is easy to install, and it works as advertised.

Cons: You have to make sure you pay attention to the directions in the box. You must install the drivers BEFORE you insert the card because the Windows plug and play drivers don't always work so well for some applications. The disk looks like it has drivers for every product Syba makes, so you have to pay attention to the chipset on the card to know what to install.

Other Thoughts: I got these to help attach signature pads to our front desk computers. These work very well with Citrix.