Now that SATA is taking the hard drive world by storm, I guess it was only a matter of time before SATA optical drives started to appear, as they will surely become the standard one day. The vision is certainly a desireable one - no more annoying and bulky PATA cables to worry about at all, plus the increased speed and stability. Setup of SATA devices would be a lot easier and of course airflow gets better too.
To this end, Plextor has released the PX-712SA Serial ATA/150 DVD Rewritable drive, and MSI's the new X5AD2. Go here for a good, well rounded review of these interesting new products.