Belkin says 'Switch to Mac'

Belkin today announced what would have otherwise been an unremarkable piece of cabling had it not been given a name that sounds like a piece of advice.

The cable is meant to recreate on a Windows machine the Mac's built-in Migration Assistant, which is used to transfer user accounts, applications, network and computer settings, files and volumes between Macs. Migration is also an optional process when initializing a new Mac.

The $49.99 cable comes with the Migration Assistant software for the Windows XP or Vista PC end that will ostensibly move all the default PC folders, settings and apps to a Mac's default folders in the same way two Macs would.

Mac's Migration Assistant allows information to be transferred between Macs on the same network, from a different startup disk attached to a single computer, or between two that are directly connected. While Switch to Mac only offers the latter of those choices, there is an unavoidable difference even there. The migration process between two directly-connected Macs traditionally takes place over IEEE 1394, but with Belkin's Switch to Mac, it's done over USB 2.0.