I bought this because I previously had a USB to Serial adapter which looks EXACTLY like the one in the photo, and I loved it. It used the very common FTDI chipset. I work in IT, and have to use a USB to serial adapter with all sorts of operating systems (everything from Windows and Mac to older Linux and Solaris). Well, this showed up, and not only does it not use the FTDI chipset (which makes it useless to me, since pretty much everything has the drivers for the FTDI installed), but it doesn't look a thing like the one in the photo.