No, you remembered correctly - in the past I have gone from a Mac to a Mac and had issues. That and I was making a hypothetical - I wasn't trying to describe an actual experience.

On the other hand, thanks for the hints - I never realized that I could just take a playlist from someone's computer and have it on mine without automatically jacking up my iPod. If their computer is set to auto sync, will it still jack the player?

The preferences are set with each iPod, so no.

And of course the PC to Mac to PC. That was fun. Good to know my memory isn't completely shot.

One of the things I love about iPods or MP3 players in general, is that you really don't have to "organize" the music all that much anyway if it's been indexed correctly. Once in the system I can sort on any number of fields and never have to navigate through some file structure concieved to meet an end no longer served. Of course, the "properly indexed" thing is the key and I find I now spend free moments cleaning up my meta-data to improve my listening experience.

Thanks for all the advice. I think I'm just going to put it all on and let her "find" all the hidden gems, like Mac Davis "Lord it's Hard to be Humble".

I sense a records manangement geek moment...