the first time i've ever been frustrated by my mac/ipod

I've been a mac user for around a year, and just today upgraded to a new 13' MBP. I have my iPod and am trying to transfer music from it onto my new iTunes. I used Senuti a year ago, but it now costs money and the trial only grants you 1000 songs (useless for my 54GB full iPod..)

So then I downloaded expod. I opened iTunes, and plugged in my iPod. iTunes then starts nagging me about either erasing and syncing my iPod so it can format for the new Mac (which I CANNOT do as I'll lose all my music!) or authorizing my new Mac so it can download songs purchased on iTunes off my iPod and onto my new mac. At first, I didn't want to do either of these, I just wanted to use expod to transfer all of my music. The minute I pressed cancel, my iPod no longer appeared in expod, and since the annoying iTunes thing would come up every time I plugged in my iPod, I HAD to do something about it.

So, I authorized my new mac to transfer iTunes purchased songs. Fine. But now when I plug in my iPod, it doesn't even appear in expod anymore...

Help! I'm trying to accomplish two things:

1.) Get expod to "see" my iPod so that I can transfer all of my old songs...
2.) Then get this new Mac to be the machine my iPod interacts with.

Advice? Tips? I just got the computer, and though I love it, this iTunes thing is such a headache...

Can you access the machine that your iTunes library used to be stored on?

Couldn't think of the name before, but it just came to me. Try Yamipod:

Yet another iPod manager - Home