Do I have to understand ATL and COM in order to use CommX?
Depends on what you want to do. For instance, you can add a COM port, terminal emulation, and ZModem to a VB application with three drops and a few lines of code. If you want to develop a remote OLE server, you might choose to use ATL as the framework. Or you could choose MFC. Or a combination of MFC and ATL. As for the Component Object Model (COM) standard, it defines a binary interface which all ActiveX controls and tools know how to use. It doesn’t hurt to understand COM, but you don’t have be a wizard in order to use CommX. It’s pretty simple, really. With the product you get some tutorials and examples to help you get up to speed quickly.
