[Hampshire] USB - serial adapter

Hi all,

I have a fairly new HP laptop with Ubuntu 6.10 installed, and working nicely.

Being new, in what I find an annoying trend these days, it doesn't have a DB9
serial port, only USB ports so I need a USB - serial adapter to allow me to
connect to the console port of switches and routers, and also hopefully to the
serial port of DEC and Sun (via yet another adapter) servers.

I've seen a couple of promising devices, one is a a Keyspan High Speed USB -
Serial adapter but it has non-free device drivers that are not permitted
by Ubuntu (which is what I'm currently using on my laptop). I'd rather not
support companies that do not produce Free drivers, or distribute docs to allow
the community to produce the drivers.

Anyhow, is anyone on this list using a similar kind of adapter? I'd be
interested in any recommendations or problems anyone has experienced using
the adapter under any linux distro (or *BSD or Solaris, for that matter).

Obviously I can serach google for similar products myself, but I'd like
the recommendations and experiences of people on the list please! Naturally
all the products you have to pay for sound great on their web sites.. ;-)

Cheers,
Steve