Can I install two iTune versions in my Win2k?

Question

Hi, a newbie here and hope this question is appropriate and not redundant (search turned up nothing).
My daughter has a 1st Gen mini and I have the 5th Gen video iPod, and would like to have iTunes 4.x for her and iTunes 6.x for me on the same PC where we have all of our music. It seems in theory both iTunes should be able to co-exist and correctly remember which iPod to respond to.
The PC now has iTunes 4.x working with the mini. So I was going to install iTunes 6.x on a different location on the PC and link my video iPod to it.
Is this a good idea or am I crazy?
Thanks in advance for the help,
Peter

Answer 1

Hi, Just found this article in todays's Wall Street Journal which exactly addresses my question. I haven't tried their suggestion but will do so. The complete article is here:
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB113702725503244355.html?mod=todaysfreefeature
But the pertinent section is posted below:
...in families with multiple iPods sharing a single computer, the iPod's companion software, iTunes, doesn't allow you to have multiple music libraries. With multiple libraries, each user could see only his or her own music, and could synchronize his or her iPod with that personal music library.
Suppose you want to synchronize only part of a library to a particular iPod, say mom's iPod, in a family with several iPods. You can place the songs mom wants into a playlist called, for instance, "Mom's iPod Songs." Then, when mom's iPod is connected, you can go into the Preferences settings in iTunes to designate that mom's iPod will automatically be synchronized only with the songs in that playlist, rather than all the songs in the library.
Or, you can go into Preferences to designate that mom's iPod won't be automatically filled at all, but will be filled manually. Then, you could manually drag all the songs she likes onto the icon representing her iPod within iTunes.
A better approach is to download a utility program called Libra, which comes in versions for both Windows and Mac. Libra, which costs $10 with an unlimited free trial period, is available at homepage.mac.com/sroy/libra. It allows you to create multiple libraries, and to switch among them.
You just run Libra, create a library -- for instance, Mom's Library -- and then select it. Next, you launch iTunes, and it comes up with only that library displayed. The first time you set up a new library, it will be empty. But you can just use the iTunes "Add to Library" command to fill it up with songs from your hard disk. You can then set up playlists that will be displayed only in that library. And you can synchronize the whole library to an iPod of your choice.
Multiple libraries can use the same songs without the need to store multiple copies of the songs.