SATA: Controller or IDE adapter?

[Marcus]

I'd like to get a SATA HDD for my PC which only has an IDE controller, 
mainly so I can benefit from SATA when I upgrade my PC in the future. 
Not much point buying IDE drives anymore?

Options are:
1) a SATA PCI controller (aka host adapter)
2) a SATA to IDE adapter which plugs into the back of the drive

Which SATA controllers work out of the box with which Ubuntu kernels? 
How do I found out the current status? (The Ubuntu forums were not much 
use at this point.)

Any experience with this question?

Thanks,

Marcus