How do I put all of my iTunes music from multiple computers / devices onto one external hard drive?

I have two desktop macs, a macbook air, two iPads, and two iPhones.  I have one Apple account that I use for all music - including music my college aged kids download.  My problem is that I would like to get all the music into one library, delete the duplicates, then have the external drive store all the music.  Is there a practical way to do this?  This way I can set up my devices so that they all have the same music and playlists.  Is this the best way to handle this situation?

The cheap and easy way is to just add all the media files as new items to a new library configured to store all on the external drive (start iTunes with the option key held down and tell it to create a new library on the external).  There won't be any automated way to prevent duplicates.  You're doing manual spring cleaning.  Of course if you add all the items as new items you will lose things such as playlists, date added, last played, etc.
I got these off the web so cannot rate them for you:
PowerTunes - http://www.fatcatsoftware.com/powertunes/ (commercial software)
syncOtunes - http://homepage.mac.com/oligrob/syncOtunes/syncOtunes.html

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