All the laptops had ethernet ports, but strangely enough I was using them to connect to the networks I was on. As for USB->Parallel convertors, the cheapest two I could find were £9.99 and ~£15, both of these required Windows drivers in order to work (or at least they state that in the product description), and when you've only got two USB ports to start with, you don't want to be using one as a parallel port.
I haven't seen any new ones, but up until recently I had a perfectly good HP laser printer that only had a parallel port. It drove me nuts when I couldn't connect it from some new laptops - especially my Powerbook.
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All the laptops had ethernet ports, but strangely enough I was using them to connect to the networks I was on. As for USB->Parallel convertors, the cheapest two I could find were £9.99 and ~£15, both of these required Windows drivers in order to work (or at least they state that in the product description), and when you've only got two USB ports to start with, you don't want to be using one as a parallel port.
I haven't seen any new ones, but up until recently I had a perfectly good HP laser printer that only had a parallel port. It drove me nuts when I couldn't connect it from some new laptops - especially my Powerbook.