How long before manufacturers start making Serial ATA optical drives? If Serial ATA is truely supposed to replace parallel ATA, then it has to happen sometime.
I have a Gigabyte 8KNXP mobtherboard and it even has a external connector for Serial ATA, it's not pretty, but you could hook up a drive externally using this.
http://www.tomshardware.com/motherboard ... 5p-35.html