In my experience the USB 2.0 drives are slower to boot initially and install, but I think they decompress to RAM since for me it has never impacted performance while using the Live functionality, so if you are ok waiting for boot/install they are just fine.

Long commutes are absolute BS, there are 24h in a day, 8 at work, 8 asleep, if you have 3 hours to work and two hours back, you have all of 2 hours a day to yourself, there need to be laws against that.