However, Dolphin can play backup discs fine (e.g. dump your ISO, burn it in a standard DVD-R media) but you may experience random stutterings here and there...
I wouldn't try to buy one of those drives either as they are all IDE which most modern MOBO's don't support anymore. Adapters do exist though.
I actually tried to buy one myself off of amazon that was listed as one of those drives it even had comments in the user reviews saying "This works for GC/Wii discs" I got the drive though and they had sent me a different model that didn't work.
They aren't all IDE. USB ones exist.
So how long do you think it'll be until disc drives finally run Wii games?
It'll never happen, so I guess the answer to your question is infinity.