I was under that impression also. [Edit] I prefer doing it by hand because I almost always only open links in new tabs, which I predict others will do as well, and VigLink does not do that with new tab links.

[Edit2]The original text before the edit was:

For reasons that are mostly silly, I like doing it by hand.

When I asked why I did it by hand, I got back the answer "I do it by hand because I do it by hand," which seemed silly. But it turns out there was a good reason which I had forgotten; score one for blind tradition.