IPod greyed out when in iTunes

Question

Hello,
I have been searching forums for the past two days and I can't find any information on this matter, or maybe I have and I just don't understand.
I currently have an iPod Classic 80GB that I have music on (obviously). I have it synced to my iMac, which I use at home. It's great because it loads new music I put in and makes my life one concept less stressful, sort of. I used to do manual all the time because I didn't like the idea of having something "automatically" do something for me. But, with the new idea to start utilizing iTunes and rating every single song and desiring to keep a recorded play count, I read that syncing made this easy, especially listening on another computer.
From what I understand, my iPod is the processing unit that actually keeps record of the play count and ratings, etc... iTunes is just the application that makes all that technical jargon simplified for the human. So in theory I should be able to do what I want in iTunes.
To cut to the chase, I have my iPod Classic synced to my computer. When I take my iPod to work and listen to music all day, I am able to come back home and sync it again and the iPod Play Count that was raised listening to music all day in the office is synced to my iMac iTunes at home and it's great. Earlier this week I was able to view my iPod on the MAC at my work in iTunes and view by Artist, Genre, Song, Play Count, etc... at my pleasure, whatever I decided. The past few days I haven't been able to do this and it's stuck on Play Count, which is quite frustrating. I can't view by artist, song, genre, etc... and the only thing I can do is add a rating. No playlist creating on the laptop or anything. Of course when I come home it's perfect because it's synced to this computer.
Do I have to manually manage the iPod on the laptop that isn't synced?
Any help would be great.

Answer 1

Solved the problem. I came into work this morning and plugged in the iPod to my laptop that the iPod isn't "synced" to. I went to the iPod and checked the box "manually manage music and videos". This allowed me to sort the iPod anyway I wish and I am able to drag songs into playlists. Hopefully this functions when I go home to the computer it is synced to.