Yeah the decoder i'm using has a USB socket but the program i'm using only supports RS232 and TCP/IP. Plus the manual that came with the decoder says the USB can only be used as a power source for the decoder.

Seems to be very few newish laptops that do have a serial port, so far i've only found a certain model of Dell but we've had a Dell fail before so i'm not too keen on that.

Thanks for that ultegrasti, I might've found a cheapy that works though, according to this page http://www.rcscoringpro.com/downloads.html