How do I stop my 2nd Mac from affecting my iPod?

My pod is assigned to my iMac (downstairs), but occasionally I want to get some tunes onto my Powerbook (upstairs). I have, in the past, attached it to my PB, and have selected to "manage music manually", but....that setting does not seem to stick. Yesterday I connected to the PB. I had a suspicion that some syncing was going on, and before I could re-select to manage music manually, iTunes wiped out all the playlists, but left most of the songs (as far as I can tell).
Anyway, I'd like to have a sure fire method of connecting to my PB without it affecting anything on the iPod. Why might that manual management setting change?
thanks

It's not "sticking" because one of the machines is still Auto-Syncing. Set the iPod to manually sync on both machines.

That doesn't seem to be the case. I have (had) them both set to manual, but my Powerbook won't keep that setting. I just tried it and it wiped out half my songs and all the playlists....ahhhhh!
Had to go back downstairs to the iMac and re=select many GB's worth of tunes and reload them all again.

There must be some method for managing an iPod from 2 different Macs. One of the problems is that, without an iPod connected to the Mac, iTunes does not show the settings for one. I would like to be able to go to iTunes, before I connect the iPod, and make sure it's set to manage manually, but it ain't possible.

baggss said:

It's not "sticking" because one of the machines is still Auto-Syncing. Set the iPod to manually sync on both machines.

Click to expand...

I manage multiple iPods (4 to be exact) from both my Quad and my iBook with no issues. Not sure what you are doing wrong but you might want to do a restore on the iPod in question.

Is the manage music manually setting stored within the iPod? Is that the way you deal with management? You manage manually? .....and you never have an issue with a Mac automatically syncing?

baggss said:

I manage multiple iPods (4 to be exact) from both my Quad and my iBook with no issues...

Click to expand...