I am using Amarok 1.4.3 and have all my music held on my Windows XP desktop as WMA, it is using this system that I rip all my new music. I am using Kubuntu 6.10 on a laptop. What I would like is for Amarok on the laptop to be able to pick up any music which is added to my desktop music folder without my having to perform a time consuming "Rescan Collection". Does anyone know how I can do this?

As far as I understand you want amarok to watch your Windows-Folder with the Music right?
I think you have to mount that folder in Linux and then you should be able to auto-sacn that folder with amarok... It's in the collection-settings of amarok, there is a point to activate auto-sacnning of folders...

I've got as far as that already, the problem is that when I add any new music to the xp system I have to use the "rescan collection" button to have Amarok rescan the entire collection. With over 500 albums the process takes quite some time. What I would like is for it to run through the folders and only update with new music.

Go to
Settings->Configure Amarok -> Collection
and set "Watch folder for Changes"

This should do the trick.
Make sure your Windows share is mounted when starting amarok.

Similar problem here. I have my albums (mp3) on a folder in a NTFS partition; and when I add music there it isn't automatically recognized by Amarok; I have to rescan the collection. I'm using Ubuntu Edgy (gnome) and the ntfs-3g driver (read-write, so I'm adding music from Ubuntu and I've tried doing so with amarok opened and closed).

This could be a limitation of FAT/NTFS file systems. Do any of you have the same problem with other filesystems, eg ext2,ext3, reiser, etc?

The NTFS-3g driver does not support mtime at all (yet). It's in the release notes. Hence collection update can't work.