can I play right off my ipod?

This is a total newbie question, and I'm only asking because I'm not at home to test it out myself.
But I recently purchased a macmini as a go between device between clients and my pc. I still use my PC for everything, including managing my music. But I would like to try playing music with ilife on my mac so I can use the remote control and play around with it.
But I don't want to copy over to another computer that isn't going to be my main machine. Is there a way to hook up the ipod directly to my mac, have it not sync and transfer files over the macmini, and yet still be able to read the music files and play them through ilife/itunes?

Total newbie question i know. But hey. We all gotta learn somehow.

There is a way to copy your iPod's libraries to another machine (not exactly the answer to your question but it's as close as I can get you, Saeed) and you can find it here...

http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/copying-music-from-ipod-...

Best,

Ron Lindeboom