The easiest, cheapest and one of the fastest ways to hook up a smartcard reader is through USB. They have Firewire now which requires a card anyway. Same goes for SCSI. Most internal devices are way too expensive IMO. The Firewire looks interesting, but it's not cheap either. External USB is plenty fast for me and cheap.
Now.. I've been thinking about this and I don't know exactly what you mean about smartcard reader capability? Do you have a link to what you're talking about exactly? It just doesn't make much sense to me.
Sal