Since I'm going to be moving to a laptop here soon, and want to keep my current DAC (non USB), I'm in the same situation.
The EDI-Audio unit looks nice, but I'm not 100% comfortable with using optical on a regular basis.
I've been curious about this, http://tinyurl.com/yf8ls2t, and mentioned it in another thread. Lots of discussion on headfi about it, too.
thanks for the link and suggestion. I haven't read through all of the head-fi discussion yet, it'll probably take me a few days to get through all that.
However, my first thoughts on the Musiland Monitor 01 USD (relative to the ESI-Audio Dr. DAC nano) are:
(1) I don't mind optical at all for home listening. At a show is a different story, but at home, it'll be steady, won't be moved around, so I think it's be solid. In fact, I already use the optical S/PDIF out of my DVD player to my DAC (because the coax S/PDIF is connected to my DAT deck).
(2) I have prior experiense with ESI Audio (I used to own a WaveTerminal 2496 PCI soundcard). It was a great card, and I trust the company. The Musiland looks like it's a small operation, and not from an established company with a good reputation. That isn't to say that the Musiland is bad or not a good option, just that I'd rather buy a product from a company that's been around for a while, so if I need service or support down the road (5 years? more?), there's a good chance that the company will still be around.
all that said, I think there are close to 50 pages on head-fi about the Musiland, so it's certainly a lot to read through, and maybe my opinion will be swayed in one direction or another.