I agree. I have for instance a bunch of serial devices to do ISP on embedded systems. I use a LOT of serial port IO each day.
Atmel have a nice USB microcontroller, though. So I expect it won't be long until I can do ISP with USB. But even then I have embedded systems with serial IO that need interfacing.
No, I am gonna need serial ports for quite some time. Half the fun of a thing like this is to put it into an enclosure you wouldn't normally put a PC into anyway, and that means interfacing to all sorts of cool devices. Cutting down the geek factor by removing serial/parallell io AND using mini-pci (name 3 mini-pci device manufacturers quickly ;-) ) really turns it all into a dodo
