[ale] OT: serial ata worth it?

[John Wells]

For you hardware gurus out there...

I'm in the market for an IDE controller card, an looking at either buying
a Promise ATA 133 card for around $35, or one of these Promise SATA 150 /
ATA 133 combo cards:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000085BCN/qid=1073433416/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1_etk-electronics/103-7246567-3011026?v=glance&s=electronics&n=172282

I don't have any serial ata drives and don't plan on buying one anytime
soon, but I wonder if it might be worth the extra $$ to have this
capability down the line.  Is the world really going towards SATA and are
the performance benefits really that great?  I'd bet this card in
particular will be obsolete by the time I get around to buying a new drive
(at least a year out), so I'm trying to justify the purchase either way.

Thanks for your input!

John