I have to admit I was fairly suprised when I plugged my new Shuffle into my PC after dumping some music on it from my PowerBook and found I had to intialize it. What a pain. Then again, the entire iPod/iTunes Music Store experience is totally slanted towards owners of a single computer.

Anyway, unlike the author's experience, my PC did warn me prior to initializing my Shuffle. Also unlike the author, even though all the music on the Shuffle was on my PC and my Mac, it erased the entire thing.

I just plugged the shuffle into my Windows box and you are right. I get the warning:

The iPod "shuffle name" is linked to another iTunes music library. Do you want to change the link to this iTunes music library and replace all existing songs and playlists on this iPod with those from this library? [yes] [no]

I've seen that message on Mac OS X with my 20 GB iPod, but it doesn't show up with my Shuffle.