There have been some recent posts on other Mindstorms forums about the on-board memory of the NXT brick. One forum posting in particular concerned the FLL challenges and the size of the NXT-G programming language files - the concern being whether the files were so large that the brick would not be able to hold enough programs to finish all the challenges.
I would like to offer up a prediction, not based on any insider-info: I believe that sometime within the next 6-9 months, LEGO will make available a USB add-on that will look like a normal NXT sensor (in size and shape) but will simply function as a pen-drive/flash-mem device. This will most likely require a new firmware update, but that's another discussion :) It will connect via a USB cable to the USB port on the brick (not stealing a sensor or motor port, if that's even possible, which I doubt) and can thus be mounted to your bot just like a sensor and not require you to build around something plugged directly into the USB port.
Again, just a guess...
I would like to offer up a prediction, not based on any insider-info: I believe that sometime within the next 6-9 months, LEGO will make available a USB add-on that will look like a normal NXT sensor (in size and shape) but will simply function as a pen-drive/flash-mem device. This will most likely require a new firmware update, but that's another discussion :) It will connect via a USB cable to the USB port on the brick (not stealing a sensor or motor port, if that's even possible, which I doubt) and can thus be mounted to your bot just like a sensor and not require you to build around something plugged directly into the USB port.
Again, just a guess...