ZDNet published an interesting article on the new standard for external ports on computers, the e-SATA (short for external Serial ATA). The best part of this port is that unlike USB and FireWire, e-SATA lets external drives communicate at the same speed as internal drives.
This connector can be found more frequently in recent mainboards, and it is a very interesting alternative to USB and Firewire ports to connect devices externally with high speed. In fact, Universal Serial Bus (USB) connections allows data transfer at a theoretical maximum of 480 megabits per second, and IEEE 1394 "FireWire" connections runs at 400Mbps or 800Mbps. In comparison, eSATA transfers data at 3 gigabits per second.
Some manufacturers are already selling external hard disc drives, and I wonder if in a near future we can see also some optical devices (maybe a 16x Blu-ray or HD-DVD burner...) with an e-SATA connection.
