the fairy tale of the UNIVERSAL serial bus

So I own some machines with that Universal OS on them and had to create a bunch (300) identical USB-keys (with the not so universal daughter OS). Doesn't sound too complicated, huh? Buy 300 USB-keys, create one by hand, dd that over the 299 others. To make life easier, add some USB-hubs to the mix. Well, I will drop the part how to use dd to make identical copies of USB-keys and just list the lessons learned:

1. The regular USB-key is some millimeters wider than a standardized USB-plug and almost all manufactors of USB-hubs place the ports in a way that there is exactly no space between the plugs. Yes, that means that you cannot plug two USB-keys in two neighboring ports of the hub then.
2. There is NO way to get a USB-hub for below 10€ here in Düsseldorf, and if you do...
3. HiSpeed USB 2.0 does NOT mean the hub will actually work as a USB 2.0 hub with 480Mbit/s, but as USB 1.1 with 12MBit/s
4. If you happen to own a Cherry keyboard with an integrated USB hub, it's most probably USB 1.1 too :/
5. When you buy 300 USB-keys, don't expect them to be identical, about 100 of them are 3MiB smaller than the other 200, and we created the initial image on one of the "big" ones of course.