In general I agree with you but I do in fact miss the dedicated physical serial and parallel ports (there's more you can do with them than what can be done on a

In general I agree with you but I do in fact miss the dedicated physical serial and parallel ports (there's more you can do with them than what can be done on a dongle). EDIT: A couple examples: You can use a dedicated parallel port as GPIO at what I'm remembering to be LS/TTL voltages (and currents). I've also used a serial port with a few diodes and resistors as an RS-485 port (not all that specification can be realized but enough for compatibility with some devices)