your my hero, portable firefox! i'm googling it now and it seems awesome, now downloading!
the USB drives last as long as you take care of them for the most part... wear and tear might get to it, i've had two for afew years and they still work, but i dont really use them to an extreme.... you should be good on your 1gig for afew years atleast...
do you know of any good portable instant messengers? i've used miranda-im on my usb but it stopped working, and stop working all together on everything for me....
edit:
the site that has portable firefox has a portable IM on it
dude, if i knew where you lived, i would mail you like a box of cookies right now!