I hate to break the news but any USB device that shows up as a "umass-device" (USB mass storage device) is bootable as long as your BIOS supports it (this includes MP3-players). HP as an example provides a utility for making an USB-key/memory bootable with MS-DOS.
As for performance how is less than 10 Mbyte/s good? It's pretty bad to be honest... :/
See http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/mem...h-roundup.html if you're wondering what I mean.

//Danne