One thing you get with second generation SATA drives (not SATA II which is different), is NCQ (Native Command Queueing).
You can google to learn more, but basically, this gives quite a bit of a boost when running multiple applications/processes that are accessing the hard drive at the same time (such as at bootup).
The main advantage of going with SATA over ATA/100 IDE, however, is the when you decide to go with a RAID array. The extra headroom that SATA gives you can actually go a long way when using high-performance drives.
But in the end, as most others will tell you, there's not a huge difference. We're still only talking about a 5-10% difference when going with the feature and high-performance drive I mentioned. To most users, SATA is a marketing scheme and there's no real reason to pick it over ATA/100.
~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein
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