As a network administrator, I use serial connections on a daily basis, connecting to routers and switches in the lab getting them ready for production in the network.
OpenBSD makes it's easy to establish a serial connection from the command line in the Windows Hyperterminal fashion (without the clunkiness)-
establishes a serial connection on a db-9 serial port (known to the OS as "cua00") to your average Cisco or Juniper switch/router on the default 9600 bps. "man cu" ("cu" stands, I believe, for "Call Unix") for more. I showed this to one of my coworkers who's Unix-wary... his response was "that's all there is to it?"