Two Computers Sharing Same Itunes Library

[bobeverywhere]

I have a laptop and a desktop that are both on a wireless network. I have all of my media (audio in this case) in a folder D:Audio on my desktop. My entire D: HD is shared on my network and mounted on my laptop as a D: drive so that all of my audio still shows up as D:Audio

What I'm trying to do now is turn my laptop into basically a media hub to play everything through my home stereo. I want both copies of iTunes to share the same library file so that I can edit playlists and media on either computer and have that changes show up on the other.

I've tried using the iTunes shared libraries but found it way too restrictive, i.e. can't create/edit playlists, add media I download on my laptop, etc. without going through a lot of extra steps.

Has anyone had any luck with this or know where to start?

[bobeverywhere]

Ok, I seem to have this working although I haven't been able to thoroughly test it yet (it's been on determining gapless playback for 4 hours and is only half done, takes a while to stream and analyze 50 gigs of music over wireless).

1) built my iTunes library on my desktop

2) closed iTunes and moved the iTunes library files from

C:Documents and settings/username/my documents/my music/itunes to

D:Audio/iTunes

3) reopened iTunes (desktop version) while holding SHIFT which brings up a menu asking to "Choose iTunes library" and browsed to the moved library files

4) opened iTunes (laptop version) while holding SHIFT and browsed to the library files

All of my music and playlists show up on both ends. Takes 5 minutes or better to open iTunes (laptop) after a change to the library file (add or delete playlists) but I can live with it.

Not sure why Apple found it necessary to hide the "Choose iTunes Library" menu, really seems like that's something that should be in the advanced preferences tab.