Use one of the FTDI devices. They are a little expensive but they are idiot-proof. In fact, you should buy one of those little USB plug in boards that have the FTDI device soldered up with the USB port. You can stick it in a breadboard or solder it into your circuit-board, install the USB device driver on your computer and other code, write your microcontroller code for your serial port and your done. For a small project it's the only way to go. I made the mistake of buying a tiny RF transceiver that I realized as soon as I saw it, I wasn't going to be able to solder this thing into my board. And even if I did, I wasn't too sure it would work. So I just bought a tiny little board that had the RF transceiver, caps, inductors, and everything else and plunked it into my project and away I went.