Common UI Elements
CommStudio hides the complexity of device configuration and status reporting. It provides elegant and easy to use dialogs that takes less than a few minutes to integrate in your application.
If you have time on your hands you could write the UI code for choosing and configuring serial ports yourself. For low-level settings you could tell you users to go to the Control Panel, and the high-level settings could handled by dialog boxes you create.
Getting everything working just right takes a surprising amount of effort, though: What happens if the user unplugs a USB cable and the hardware changes from underneath you? How do you handle (and test!) third party devices from different vendors?