IOGEAR's new USB Smartlink cable for Windows Vista is based on a lot of assumptions: number one, the company is assuming that there are in fact enough Vista users with new notebooks or desktops out there who haven't gotten around to transferring their music, documents, settings, and pictures from their old XP-equipped rig to the one running the new Microsoft OS.

Then there's the assumption that said users didn't just backup their data and install Vista over XP, of course.

Finally, IOGEAR is banking on the fact that people will opt for its own Vista transfer cable rather than, say, Belkins, which costs exactly the same amount of money and has been available since Vista was released. That's a lot of assuming.

Nevertherless, IOGEAR maintains that the cable will eliminate the need for middleman storage devices like external hard drives and CDs, during the migration process. In what might be its one unique selling point, the IOGEAR cable is designed to work with Windows Easy Transfer, a new feature on the Vista OS, and will support transfer rates of up to 480-Mbytes/s, according to the company.

Belkin's Vista migration cable also purports to make the migration of settings and files from XP to Vista a little easier. Unlike IOGEAR's Smartlink, however, Belkin's cable requires the installation of additional drivers and software.