Controlling Picaxe microcontrollers with a computer or let them communicate

Arduino

MG2R I may save myself some grief and do this with an arduino, I was thinking that a picaxe would be a cheap and compact solution but from what I can see issuning a serin on picaxe overrides interupts - yuck.

Sould be easy enough to do with an Arduino and I think i have a couple spare.

Bob