Ipod Nano v itouch

[LadyMuck]

My 8 yo has been asking for an ipod for Christmas for several months now (so at leaat is consistent). He is now asking for an itouch, which seems to be another £60 or so. He doesn't have a DS or similar, though he does use his brother's one occasionally.

The itouch looks as if it will combine games/music/video fairly well. However I've never considered spending so much on something so small for him. I suspect that I would be more annoyed if he breaks/loses something worth £160 than if it was worth £100. That said I would also like him to get use out of it, so having it as a possible gaming machine is useful. I haven't yet worked out whether the desire for the itouch is primarily playground posing (not that it will ever go near the playground!).

The touch is brilliant BUT im not so sure I would get it for an 8 yr old. The nano can play video etc, hth

Yes we have nanos in the house already (several generations of them I suspect!). I guess I'm wondering whether I will avoid having to buy another Nintendo ds if he has an itouch.

My 10 year old wants one but I'm not sure.

Would we have to get a wifi router thingy for the house to enable him to get full use? I suspect we would.

I know I'm old but at ten I was still into toys bikes etc.

My 8 year old much prefers the itouch, even though I have a few games on the nano. I've downloaded quite a lot of free ones, and also got some goodies like monkey ball and cro magnon rally for so very much less than nintendo charge.

Yes, you'd need a wifi router thingy. Yes, you'd have to confiscate it a lot so that you could play on it, help him set it up.

lady muck ... however, I'd say nintendo ds is more suitable for his age. You just have to decide how you're going to police it.

dp has an itouch & almost 7 year old ds thinks it's very cool indeed & often tries to nick it. we're buying him a ds for his birthday .

Hmm. Well he hasn't asked for a Nintendo DS even though we did suggest it - there are 2 in the house already so he usually would have access to one if he wanted to. In my experience the addiction element is to specific games rather than to the machines themselves, and so I'm more worried about when the threat of online gaming or networking arises. Are the itouch games more of the oneplayer in isolation though if you are a whizz you can link up with others?

I had made the suggestion that dh could upgrade to an itouch and ds could have his existing nano but that doesn't seem to have appealed.

Out of interest how do people manage music budgets with children of this age? We have a fair itunes library but presumably ds1 will have his own tastes.