Moving iTunes library from PC to Mac using external hard drive

Hi there,
I recently bought myself a MacBook Air. This is my first Apple computer as I'd always used Windows before. On my old computer (running Vista), I built up a huge iTunes library. I really want to move this over to my Mac but there are two things which are making this a bit more complicated than it needs to be:
1. I want to keep all of my playlists, play counts, date added etc.
2. I don't want the songs to be stored on the computer, I want them kept on an external hard drive. So the library will show all the songs but I need to actually have the external hard drive plugged in to play them. Also saves me a **** of a lot of precious Mac space.
I have read a few things about how to do this so I'm a little along the way. I consolidated all my music files on my old computer and copied them over to the Hard Drive. But from here I just can't get it right. Assuming I've done nothing from this point, what would be the next steps you would take to make points 1 and 2 happen? I will try again based on your instructions but if it doesn't work then I come back and specify at what points it isn't working.
I would be ever so grateful for some guidance on this.
Cheers

Did you close iTunes on your old computer before you tried to copy it?
If that is not the case right click on the itunes Library.itl in finder.
Usually found in username/Music/iTunes
Select Get info and in the box that appears on the left scroll down to the bottom and check the permissions.
When that is resolved it should just copy over
Here is the Apple Article
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1751

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