Syncing iPod to a new installation of iTunes while retaining Play Count

Question

I have an iPod nano that I use in my baby's nursery for her lullaby music. I thought it would be cool to use the Audioscrobbler program from www.last.fm to track her "listening habits" from this very early age and be able to see years down the road what she has listened to over time.
The thing is, I originally synced the iPod with mp3 files from my installation of iTunes. I also have my own Last.fm profile that already syncs with iTunes files played on this profile. I realized that if I sync her Nano with this same instance of iTunes, it will combine all of her Play Counts with my own history. I don't want to confuse the Last.fm "scrobbler" system tray program with which play counts should be scrobbled.
I know I could create another profile for her on this same computer, but I thought it might be even easier to just sync it with iTunes on my laptop (which doesn't have any iPods associated with it yet.) Either way, it will not be the exact same installation of iTunes that the Nano was originally synced with. HOWEVER, my mp3 files are on a shared network-attached storage hard drive, so all of the iTunes installations (on both the desktop and laptop) would be reading the exact same files.
SO - the jist of my questions is this:
1.) If my iTunes library reads from M:/My Music/ (NAS drive), will the Nano see a different installation of iTunes as the same library?
2.) If I sync her Nano with a different installation of iTunes, will it record the Play Counts of what she has already listened to? * This is my most important question. I don't care if it erases the files on the Nano, because I will just sync them again. I just want to make sure it records in iTunes the current Play Count stored on her Nano right now, so I can sync it with her Last.fm profile.
Thanks in advance! I asked about this on the Last.fm forums, and they advised me to ask over here instead since it has more to do with iTunes and syncing.
- Holly

Answer 1

Katrina, Thanks for the link.
Ahhh... yes, current playcounts ARE kind of important. I've been holding out on syncing it since March because I was trying to figure this out and get information on the best way to do it. That's 7+/- hours of music per night X 4 months! Is there a way to read what the playcounts currently are on the iPod itself right now? If all else fails, I could manually adjust them in the empty XML file, right?
I think if I can get the iTunes on my laptop to read and record the playcounts from the iPod, then I can sync the Last.fm process to read it later. I can use their new "import history" feature to import the playcounts. I just need to make sure that I can get iTunes to record them instead of wiping the iPod.
I've read up on manually managing the iPod... would that help any?
Since my music files are on a shared network drive, can I copy either of those two metadata files (iTunes Music Library.xml and/or iTunes Library.itl) from my desktop to my laptop and then hand modify the XML code to change all playcounts to zero and then sync the iPod? Will that fake the laptop out to believe it was the original computer that the iPod was first synced with?
And no on the operating systems My desktop is Vista Home Premium and the laptop is XP Home.
THANKS FOR YOUR HELP!!!! :-D