USB 3 speed issue on MacBook

Hello,

I just decided to migrate from PC & bought my first MacBook a month back, it's MD104LL Model with upgraded 7200RPM disk.

My overall experience had been good, except the following

1. USB 3.0 transfer speeds are really awesome on other devices, but I could not get good transfer speed, when a flash disk is connected and single big file is being transferred, I could merely observe max 10MB/s speed; SATA is normally slower than flash, but still I expected more than what I got.
2. Battery backup is claimed to be great (http://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/features/), but in my case even with ordinary browsing I could not observe more than 4 Hrs of backup. I understand that figures in features page would be for marketing purpose and maybe taken in very light usage, but as a Mac users what is the experience of you people? Is this the backup you got from fresh battery?

Any help appreciated,