Well, there are some cases where getting to know the dedicated IT department are impossible... which I can't provide assistance with, sadly.
As for iTunes 8, i'll test, but I hope it doesn't work with Panther. After the iTunes 8 install on my Quicksilver desktop just about everything in iTunes slowed down. If I had the option, i'd roll it back to 7.7 but i've decided to see how the next revision goes...