Yes you can go USB to USB but not using the normal cable. Check out the link, it shows the special cable you need that has a small circuit board built in. Here is a link that might be useful: Special USB to USB connector

The easiest way is to just install xmarks.com to the browser you use, they make a version for all the top browsers. Once you install it on your original pc it will save them it also creates a Web Page just for you with all your bookmarks there as well so you can access them from any computer any where. Then when you get the new pc install xmarks on it too and hit sync bookmarks and voila they are all exactly as they were on the other one. I absolutely love xmarks. Xmarks.com

Oh yeah vista is almost as outdated as xp. You can still find a lot of new ones with windows 7 but the newest will have windows 8 on them. As to transfer of files I too would not let BB touch my computers. It is not difficult to transfer files, pictures, etc. You can plug in a thumb flash drive into the old pc select the files or folders you want to copy to the new one then drag to the flash drive icon or right click on the selected files and select the flash drive to copy to. Windows 7 has a built in feature for doing this easily, you will need to install it to the xp machine but it is pretty easy. The link below will have instructions Here is a link that might be useful: Easy transfer

Do you have any DRM protected content that you purchased from itunes? That may make a difference in how you do this. You can copy protected content to more than one PC, but there is a limit (I forget what the limit is). You can simply copy the contents of "My Documents\My Music\iTunes" from your current PC to the new one to start. Since you can have the content on 2 PCs, this works for the protected content, also. If you're using itunes, you can use the ipod with both PCs, but I don't think you can use the ipod to transfer between the two PCs (at least not readily). You can use it with both PCs. To do so, when you connect it, on the ipod summary page, check the Manually manage music and videos button. Then, when you want to copy to the ipod, you drag from the left bar to the ipod. If you click help and search for manually manage, you'll find detailed instructions. You can also check the box to enable disk use, but itunes doesn't copy files to the ipod with the same names as it uses in Windows, so that won't be much help, I don't think.