So I know Apple is completely screwing us here but is there any ETA when one could reasonablly assume MC 12 will work with the new Touch? I had to leave Media Center for a brief hiatus with ITUNES (God, do I hate it), but looking forward to leaving the dark side and coming back to the best media manager out there.
I feel your pain. I had to use iTunes for 3 days when MC12 didn't support iPod Classic and I did hate it. I used iTunes to sync to my media but I didn't want iTunes to change any files. I used a couple of work-arounds during that time that may help you.
The first work-around was basically to import all media files in iTunes via a read-only shared folder (read-only to make sure that iTunes do not muck around with your tags etc.). And then use iTunes to sync it. This will work if all your music/media files are in format that is supported by iTunes. Suppose you have all your media in some directory, say, C:\Media. First, you have to make it a read-only windows share and mount it as a drive. To make this folder a shared folder. Right click on the folder, click on Sharing and then say Share this folder. Make sure that it is read only permission. Now, mount this as a drive by running a command net use M: \\yourmachinename\C:\Media. Now import M: folder to iTunes and then use it to sync to iPod.
The second work-around was the one that will work if you have many media in format that is not supported by iTunes (e.g. FLAC). In this case, create some directory, say C:\iTunesFolder. Now, map this directory as a handheld in MC12 (read wiki on how to do that if you don't already know). Now, sync what you want on your iPod to this directory mounted as handheld (of course, with conversion to supported formats e.g. MP3 for FLAC). Now, import this directory in iTunes and use it to sync.
In both of these ways, you can use MC12 to organize/edit your media library and they should be automatically visible to iTunes. The only downside is that you can't get play-counts from your iPod back to your MC12 library.
Osho