I compared them a long time ago and developed a hatred of Meteoscan - can't remember why now! Maybe because it was unusable until you paid ? Can Meteoscan get data from the Pactor ?

USB vs Serial: I had big problems with a USB-serial converter crashing when I transmitted. But that with an old and primitive modem. However, SGC themselves appear to acknowledge this problem. I can't find the quote now on their site, but they say that USB cannot be shielded from HF because they run at the same frequency and that seems to be what drove them to offer the bluetooth option for the USB modem.

But a simpler and cheaper option seems to be to go for the IIex and connect with a PCMCIA-serial card. This is a dead simple and flexible solution which provides a 'true' serial connection(s) (I have a card with 2 serial ports) which can be used for other things.