um, when you use the hardware UART with a max232, it works just fine with a PC without any additional inverters. if you bit-bang it, just make sure to use the same logic levels as the UART does and you're fine (active high, and hold the line high between packets...). (yes, the max232 is inverting, but you also have to remember that in RS232, a negative voltage is a 1 and a positive voltage is a 0, so you WANT it to be inverting, in a sense)
also, if you look at sparkfun.com they have a discrete level shifter that uses only transistors, a diode, a cap, and some resistors, and can be built extremely small (and is much cheaper than a max232) not to mention, it typically works fine at all baud rates, and looks like it even maintains proper RS232 logic levels. i haven't gone back to max232's since I started using that circuit.