Even 10-15 years ago, proper serial ports were becoming extremely rare, but there are times when you need a proper one.

Around that time we resorted to pc card/express card serial ports for occasions when USB to serial isn't good enough, although they were relatively expensive (3-4 times more than a USB serial dongle).

(The use case in that scenario was field engineers connecting to a very wide variety of odd equipment, like fire alarm panels and door entry systems, that sort of thing - USB dongles were massively inconsistent and unreliable - different dongles would be compatible/incompatible with different kit, was a right mess).

Obviously, these days, express card slots are also quite rare.

(The alternative is hauling out my old IBM T22, which I think maybe came with Win98... mostly still works apart from the battery).

If you're going into an RJ45 serial connection (like I am at the moment), then an ideal laptop would have multiple RJ45s which could be used as either 10G or serial with a standard cat5 cable (not a specially wired one).

Do any (non-specialist) laptops still have VGA ports? I had a quick look on the Dell site and couldn't find any.

Those are seems to available on other markets. https://www.asus.com/Laptops/For-Work/ExpertBook/ExpertBook-... https://www.fujitsu.com/global/products/computing/pc/noteboo...