Serial ATA optical drives are now readily available, and the timing couldn't be better as motherboards are quickly loosing the last vestiges of the IDE connector. Parallel IDE has been on the outs forever, but optical drives have only recently adopted SATA to replace it. For the longest time Plextor was the only optical drive manufacturer that offered SATA DVD and CD-ROM drives. Those drives were priced at three to four times what regular optical drives cost... but now it's easy to find an Serial ATA optical drive for under $40. Newer, faster, cheaper - that's the PC industry!