My immediate impressions are:

Very well made indeed with range limiter, focus-hold and AF/M switches and Direct Manual Focus too.

Thankfully not quite as big as I'd thought from the pictures/reviews.

Fast, SILENT and oh so smooth focussing - close focus is good – and even at 300mm will easily focus on my toes when I'm standing up

Lens hoods don’t get more effective than the one that comes with this lens!

Nice balance on a700 with vertical grip.

Very, very sharp!

One thing to get used to is the (to me) reversing of the zoom/focus rings from usual - zoom is the front ring.

Just one quick shot ....

Full frame

Crop from 100%

Sony a700 and 70-300mm set at 300mm 1/640th at f9 ISO 800

(Converted from raw and colour balance and drastic size reduction but nothing else - except whatever CS3 does to "save for web" files ... plus whatever Photobucket gets up to