[Nut-upsuser] NUT, Ubuntu and Serial Ports

[Huge]

I am about to retire my Sun Solaris workstation and replace it with a
Intel box (A Dell Inspiron 530) running Ubuntu. My UPS (an APC
SmartUPS2200) only has a serial port for communicating with its
controlling host. The Sun has a serial port, but the Dell doesn't.

So ... what kind of serial port should I get? I don't really want to
waste a precious PCI slot on a serial card (unless I can get a combo
card with, say, an RS232 port and a firewire port). OTOH, I know nada
about the USB to RS232 adaptors now widely available.

Any suggestions, thoughts, etc., gratefully accepted.

Happy New Year.

Hugh.