ITunes library - two (or more) computers, one external library

Question

Hi, apologies if I've posted in the wrong place. I hope someone will be able to point me in the right direction with this.
Basically, I have two computers, iMac and Powerbook, and want to create a big iTunes library on an external hard drive that I can access on both computers. Home sharing is out, given that they are on different networks.
I've worked out how to do this, but any ratings etc. that I do on one computer aren't recognised on the other.
I am going to keep one copy of the library etc files on my iMac so that iTunes will continue to function without asking me to choose a library every time. But is there any way of keeping a copy of this file on the hard drive too, that will update automatically when any changes have been made to ratings etc?
I know I could just copy it across and overwrite it every time I change anything, but is there any way of doing this more easily?
Many thanks

Answer 1

Normally, I would have said this couldn't be done. But I recently started using a product that might just be able to do it.
The product is Dropbox (http://www.getdropbox.com). Dropbox defines a folder on your hard drive as a syncing item. Anything in that folder will be automatically copied up to Dropbox's servers and then downloaded to every computer registered to the same Dropbox account. Dropbox uses one specific folder to do this, but you can use Symbolic Links to files outside of your Dropbox folder to make those files sync. Dropbox is free up to 2GB.
Theoretically, this should work: load Dropbox on each computer. On your main computer create a symbolic links that point to your iTunes database and preference files. Drop the symbolic links in the Dropbox folder. Go to the other computer and replace the iTunes database and preference files with symbolic links that point to the cooresponding files in your Dropbox. That's it.
As long as only one copy of iTunes is open at any time, this ought to work. I wouldn't try to sync your actual music files through Dropbox, as those will fill up your free space fast. But you said the actual library was going on an external drive that was net accessible from both boxes.
Doc