usb install versus live-usb install

[Paul Johnson]

I saw the announcement that F9 supports the live-usb install.
Apparently, (sounds like magic), the live-usb install can go onto a
usb stick and then rpms can be upgraded on that disk without blowing
anything up.  Since the live-usb is a compressed file system, I'm
surprised this works.

Until now, I've been installing Fedora on USB devices through the
ordinary approach.  It only takes a bit of care with the initrd
creation to make sure a system starts off the usb.  The system is not
compressed into such a small space as the live-usb image, but it works
fine.

Question: does the live-usb approach have other benefits or costs I'm
not aware of?  If I have an 80 Gig hard disk, is there any benefit to
live-usb?

The live-usb approach looks easier to maintain, one probably does not
have to do a lot of manual adjustment to grub.conf or such.  What
else?

-- 
Paul E. Johnson
Professor, Political Science
1541 Lilac Lane, Room 504
University of Kansas