PostgreSQL vacuum duration on a big table
Because you haven't specified your PostgreSQL version it's hard to answer. VACUUM has been improved in many ways on newer versions.

Presuming you're on 9.0 or 9.1 - so you don't need a max_fsm_pages setting, you have the improved VACUUM FULL, you have the visibility map, etc - then subsequent VACUUM operations should be quite fast. However, you should not be doing them.

Turn autovaccum on. Set it to run frequently. If this table is updated a lot, set autovaccum to process it more often. Vaguely modern PostgreSQL versions work best with lots of very frequent vacuum runs.