To answer my own question: no. it makes no difference.
I tested this morning the external drives (all with external power):
La Cie - 500 GB - NTFS formatted
MyBook - 1000 GB - NTFS formatted
Maxtor - 150 GB - FAT32 formatted
They all work on my PC with Windows Vista.
They all work on my PC with Linux Ubuntu.
They all work well with the (large) eDGe. So I don't understand the statement that LaCie does not support Android. Maybe someone with both EE and PE can tell if there is a difference between the EE and the PE here?