LaCie Rikiki USB 3 external Hard Drive - less than 50% faster than USB 2

Firstly has anybody got any advice on what hardware to use to get the best USB 3 performance on my Laptop or if there is anything I can do with my current stuff to get the best performance out of it?

As of late I don't seem to be looking into my purchases enough and feel on this occasion I've been bitten on the bum a little bit.

My set up is as follows:

Toshiba A200 Satellite
Intel Core 2 Duo T5450 @ 1.66 GHz
2 GB of RAM

Freecom USB 3 ExpressCard connected to dedicated power supply
&
LaCie Rikiki USB 3 500GB external portable Hard Drive without additional power


I needed more Hard Drive space and I thought I might as well get faster transfer speeds at the same time with USB 3. I have just done a (very rough and basic) test with my new set up to get the following results transferring a 1.3 GB file:

USB 2 = 57 secs = 0.19 Gbits/s

USB 3 = 40 secs = 0.27 Gbits/s



I'm not so naive as to take the way companies market things at face value, but it does annoy me when Hard Drives are advertised with the highest theoretical transfer rates possible and also comparisons like:

USB 3 = 10x USB 2

I was never expecting to get what is advised to be the reasonable to achieve raw bandwidth throughput of 3.2 Gbits/s, but 0.27 Gbits/s is way short of this not to mention the advertised 5 Gbits/s. Also the 0.27 Gbits/s is way short of the advertised 10 times as fast as USB 2 (2 Gbits/s) that is advertised and is more like 1.5 times as fast.