iPod Setting up identical iTunes and iPod songs on two computers

[Clix Pix]

OK, so I am a little confused here. I had no problem setting up my new iPod on the iMac and immediately had a blast purchasing and downloading many songs from the iTunes store. After a few days I decided it was time to install the same thing on my PB, which had nothing installed yet in iTunes. I found instructions on the iPod site, which directed me to copy my iTunes folder from the iMac on to the iPod, which I did, and then to in turn copy it from the iPod into the PB. I did that, too. Something isn't right, though, because when I open iTunes instead of everything showing up exactly the way it does on the iMac's version of iTunes, with various folders and such, or showing up in the library, instead it looks as though everything is one big folder of songs in a new folder called [my name]'s iPod as well as another folder called [my name]'s ...[truncated so I don't know what the folder's actual name is] ???? I'm confused here. Shouldn't I have been able to copy everything from the one computer to the other and have it appear in the laptop's iTunes in the library, rather than another separate folder? What did i do incorrectly? Please help!

Edited to add: now I seem to have gummed things up even more by apparently erasing everything that was on the iPod! ?? Grrrrr....

The tunes are still in the PB, though, but I don't understand why when I replaced the former Music>iTunes folder it didn't automatically do as the original one did in my iMac, just put all the tunes in the library. ???

I have both machines on a wireless network if that makes any difference.

Getting really frustrated here!

OTB

 

[mj_1903]

I have an easy solution that I wrote for myself.

I keep one computer will all my songs and load them on my iPod. I then use iPodRip (in my sig) to sync the iPod with the second computer which copies across all the songs and playlists and finds and adjusts the changes.

Unfortunately that might sound like a marketing blurb but I wrote it for myself. I think however the latest version has a bug but I am about to release a fix for it.

 

[Clix Pix]

Well, my somewhat unsatisfactory solution for the time being was to simply go folder by folder and plop them into the open iTunes library in the program itself, and that did seem to work, as now the songs play. I then did the setting up of the smart folders and such just as I have them on my iMac and so now they're organized. I must've done something wrong somewhere along the line, though, because certainly according to the instructions I was following when I had copied the folder from the iPod to the PB that should have meant that the complete library would have appeared immediately in the iTune program, but it didn't. Now I'm wondering what will happen when I add tunes in the future...

OTB