Dear Andy,
One thing that I am personally very pessimistic about is the future of RS-232 in PCs. The simplicity of RS-232 is ideal for interfacing to embedded products. But the reality is RS-232 unfortunately has started to disappear from PCs(even centronics has uncertain future ). I think two options will remain for interfacing embedded products to PCs. Either using extra interfacing hardware adaptors or adopt the embedded products to use new ports. Personally I think second option will be better choice.

Thank you