Plugged in and Fedora Core 5 recognised it and auto-mounted it.

Filesystem was vfat on receipt, so great for Windows /Linux transfers

Only "problem" was the free space was given as 466GB, not 500GB. Maybe a re-format would fix it?

Works without hassle after plugging it into my system (using Ubuntu 7.10 "Gutsy").

The storage space is indeed 500 GB, with 1 GB = 1e9 (one billion) bytes.

I performed a quick test (hdparm -Tt) to check the transfer rate, and I got a transfer rate of about 27.5 MB/s or 220 Mbit/s (out of a maximum possibile of 480 Mbit/s), which IMHO is not bad at all. It means that the device is operating as advertised and that it does not have any configuration problems.