Home Forums Chat Forum £400 for a 10 year old Xmas pressie iPad 2 or lap top?

Viewing 40 posts - 81 through 120 (of 179 total)
  • £400 for a 10 year old Xmas pressie iPad 2 or lap top?
  • timc
    Free Member

    geordiemick00 – Member
    Teamhurtmore:

    I didn’t take it as a personal attack, but i’ll explain… The present is between me and the estranged ex, she’s on £60K a year and I’m on £40k a year, so £200 each is fortunately affordable. We both had childhoods where we got sweet FA because she had tight fisted parents and mine were skint, so we both want our child to have nicer things in life now that we can afford to. I lost my job in august and have had to sell some bikes off to tide me through christmas but as pointed out by other nobody has questioned me in the last twelve months when I’ve spend £15k on mountain bikes…

    she’s extremely intelligent, very low maintenance and way ahead of her years and never expects stuff, she’s willing to earn it and don’t moan if she doesn’t get. She’s very adept on a pc/mac and looks after her personal belongings. The ex and her have two dogs and two horses, she handles them all, feeds them, trains them and takes her responsibilities seriously.

    I have no issues with giving her an iPad as I know it will be fine, the reason for putting this post up was to merely find out if a lap top is a better alternative to an iPad. So far a dodgy Dell website that can’t get me to the good deal offered and a Sony netbook sized lap top have been suggested but please feel free to carry on discussing what I came on here for…

    mate don’t even bother justifying your actions.

    for what its worth a few friends kids had both laptops / notebooks / iPads for things like cbeebies websites etc, personally id get an iPad now and a good laptop in a couple of years

    I wouldn’t bother geordiemick, it’s STW after all – take the helpful replies, ignore the vitriol. I’m with you all the way.

    leffeboy
    Full Member

    was to merely find out if a lap top is a better alternative to an iPad.

    For the OP, we have an iPad and a lappie in the house and our kids, who are about the age of yours, seem to pick up the iPad rather than the lappie. I deliberately got an iPad rather than iPad2 as I didn’t want young girls with webcams in their bedroom (the lappie is only allowed to be used in the main rooms – no bedrooms).

    The other benefit of the iPad over the lappie is that it is less likely to get infected with malware as they follow the links that their friends send them.

    Oh, and OpenDNS of course

    stumpy01
    Full Member

    Jeez – if you can afford it, then why not?!

    I was in John Lewis at the weekend doing a bit of Christmas shopping & was quite impressed with some of the netbooks & what u can get for your money.

    I’d take a look at a decent netbook as well as laptops.

    boblo
    Free Member

    How way Geordie, I wouldn’t take much notice of it… From the recent ‘how solvent are you?’ thread, it’s pretty clear some on here are a bit hard up at the moment.

    It’s against this and the fact that a lot are middle aged and therefore grew up in the 70’s/early 80’s when there just wasn’t as much spare cash around and you can see where a lot of people’s reference points are.

    My own nephew (12) is getting an iPhone for Xmas (amongst other things) and I still can’t believe it. How long before the ‘bigger boys’ take his £500 object of conspicuous consumption off him in the playground (assuming ‘they’ haven’t sold off all the playgrounds yet)?

    teamhurtmore
    Free Member

    GM – again hope my comments were non misconstrued. Happy Christmas to you and your daughter. Recommendation would be ipad over laptop and ipad over ipad 2 – yes for the same reasons re webcam posted above.

    I hope that you have found/find a new job soon – then have a little chat about spending 38% of gross income on two-wheeled fun things!!!

    warton
    Free Member

    Christ, what is the fuss about. The guy can afford to, and wants to spend some money on his daughter. Just because you can’t afford / won’t spend that doesn’t mean hes spoiling her. Get a life

    Buy her an Ipad. much better product for a kid…

    ianv
    Free Member

    Laptop, the ipad might look nicer but there will come a time when she will be using windows products at school and home access will be very beneficial. If you buy the ipad, you would probably end up getting hassled for a laptop as well in the not too distant future.

    mastiles_fanylion
    Free Member

    ignore the vitriol

    I don’t think there is any vitriol, just surprise that people think spending £400 on fancy electronic gadgets is a reasonable budget for Christmas presents for a 10 yr old.

    For what it is worth, I think that teaching children the value of money is more important than showering them with expensive presents. The sister of a good friend has two children of 12 and 14 and they get so much spent on them it is shocking – LCD tvs in each bedroom, PS3s each, identical games each (as they won’t share the same game).

    Last year one of them wanted an expensive high performance remote control car. My friend has such a remote control car and he asked the child if he wanted that one first, just to check that he would be okay with it before his mum spent £150> on one. The child said something along the lines of ‘no, I want a new one’.

    If he was my child he would have got nothing after that.

    geordiemick00
    Free Member

    I don’t think there is any vitriol, just surprise that people think spending £400 on fancy electronic gadgets is a reasonable budget for Christmas presents for a 10 yr old.

    and how many of us on here ‘tell porkies’ about how much our bikes/bits cost as out other halves could probably start a similar thread thinking what we spend is unreasonable.

    She knows the value of money and has been saving up herself for the last six months and has £200 saved up. She’s asking us for money to put towards it, she’s not expecting one and me being the Dad who wants her to do well will tell her to put her money in her savings account that she can’t have til she’s 21.

    You have blatantly got me confused with your friends sister who seemingly ‘showers her children with expensive gifts’, I don’t. She has what a lot of kids have these days, she has a decent £300 bike which she cleans weekly and doesn’t leave out to rust and she has a blackberry which all of her mates have as it’s a) a way of keeping in contact with me (who doesn’t live with her) b) it was cheaper than topping up her PAYG phone and costs £10.50 a month, a relatively cheap way of keeping in contact with her friends and family.

    geordiemick00
    Free Member

    Laptop, the ipad might look nicer but there will come a time when she will be using windows products at school and home access will be very beneficial. If you buy the ipad, you would probably end up getting hassled for a laptop as well in the not too distant future.

    that was at the forefront of my mind as she’s using excel now….

    mastiles_fanylion
    Free Member

    Fair enough Mick – from reading some of your posts it does seem your child is a level-headed child and good on her for that. I am not trying to be judgemental but I guess I was never the sort of child who could get expensive things nor do I really have the ability at the moment to spend that amount on my children and it just seemed an awful lot of money.

    prezet
    Free Member

    Wait for the Amazon Fire (will be much cheaper), or go for an Android based tablet – but if she’s going to use it for homework etc, then I’d suggest a cheap laptop.

    But have to agree that £400 for christmas is ridiculous.

    Nick
    Full Member

    Do what ever you want, you shouldn’t need to justify to a bunch of strangers what you want to give your kid from Christmas, I’m sure she will be over the moon with an iPad.

    But have to agree that £400 for christmas is ridiculous.

    Of course it’s not, plenty of people spend a lot more than that, plenty will spend a lot less, and so it goes.

    ianv
    Free Member

    Someone posts a picture of their new bike that costs the same as a small family car and will get used at way less that its capability once or twice a week max yet no one says anything. Expensive bikes in the classified in almost pristine condition (ridden twice or whatever) and no one says anything. Yet someone asks about a present that costs less than 10% the value of said bikes (and will be used much more) and there’s uproar. 🙄

    mastiles_fanylion
    Free Member

    ianv – for me the argument is that an adult working for and spending money on themselves is far different than a child asking for expensive presents. A child should be taught the value of money and understand they have to work for things, not just ask and get.

    I do think though, from what the OP has subsequently said, that his daughter is not a demanding child rather just in a fortunate position and does value what she is given. (Which is a far cry from the example I give above of someone I know).

    trail_rat
    Free Member

    age 10 …. internet from a computer set up in a family room

    ipad will need laptop access to get music on it and to back it up and even update it to start with !

    the two are not mutually exclusive

    for educational purposes get a laptop because its whats used in the big bad world and its a life skill these days being able to operate a computer efficiently

    ipad really is just an expensive toy it comes into its own when traveling for media consumption(why i got mine) – its not a productive tool

    llama
    Full Member

    If OP said he was getting his kid a bike worth 400 that nobody would bat an eyelid

    To the OP. Get him one for xmas and the other for his birthday. Not sure about the year after that though, but don’t worry there will be a new iPad out by then.

    Double what I would spend, but then I’ve got more kids and a humungous mortgage

    molgrips
    Free Member

    I have considered the question of how much to spend on my kids.

    I think that Christmas should not be a time for massively expensive presents. If my kids have a genuine requirement for a laptop, a decent bike, a musical instrument or whatever, I’ll more than likely shell out. But not at Christmas. Otherwise I fear Christmas will be a time for demanding and expecting huge sums of money spent and not for enjoying the fun of it all. Big purchases should be outside the normal loop of gift buying. Like houses, cars, and bikes. My bikes were all bought with windfalls, if my kids had been around then they’d have got something too.

    mastiles_fanylion
    Free Member

    (nods head in agreement with Molgrips)

    packer
    Free Member

    ipad will need laptop access to get music on it and to back it up and even update it to start with

    iPad does not need a computer to back it up or update it since iOS 5 was released.

    Also music can be purchased directly from the iTunes store without the need for a computer.
    Of course if you want to rip CDs to put on it then you will need a computer.

    leffeboy
    Full Member

    plus games for the iPad are cheap.

    MrsToast
    Free Member

    As I child, I rarely got random presents throughout the year, and certainly nothing expensive. However, at Christmas, my parents would get my brother and I one ‘big’ gift each. We had a Spectrum 48k, a Commodore 64, an Amiga 500+ – all of which inspired a lifelong love of technology and gaming which ended up defining my future.

    Get her a laptop so she can use Excel/Word/Powerpoint, etc. Also, get her Scratch and get her into programming. Then when she’s a fabulously rich coder* she can start repaying her debt! 😛

    * Not in the games industry – it’s fun, it’s creative, but bloody hell you earn more outside of it!

    ditch_jockey
    Full Member

    How about if you remove the “for Christmas”, and leave it as he is going to buy a laptop for his child to use, partly for her education, but she will also be allowed to use it for recreation and games.

    If you flip it around this way, then it’s really the same as asking “what washing machine for the wife’s Christmas”

    mogrim
    Full Member

    Nothing wrong with an iPad, but I’d get the laptop, be a lot more use for school projects and the like in the future. It’s your money and your kid, go for it. I would.

    trail_rat
    Free Member

    if your going to quote me at least read the full quote instead of trying to be smart …..

    molgrips
    Free Member

    We had two computers when I was a kid, not a the same time though. They were family computers though, not mine, even though it was mostly me using them. They were also in the spare room most of the time, my parents were very keen on them not ending up in my room. Neither was a Christmas present either.

    chakaping
    Full Member

    I bet nobody would have batted an eyelid if you’d said you were spending £400 on a bike for your 10-year-old daughter.

    You don’t do yourself any favours implying that people are envious though. They’re just grumpy really and some people prefer to keep quiet about their finances.

    boblo
    Free Member

    Here we go. page 3, time for the descent into squabbling…

    bravohotel8er
    Free Member

    This website is hilarious.

    There seems to be an equal blend of threads about which trim level to opt for on an Audi A5 (or suchlike) and others where chippy little men seek to exorcise their own feelings of inadequacy by pontificating on how others should spend their money. Then the usual fauxletarians turn up to out do each other with stories, whether real or imagined of living in a shoebox in the middle of the road.

    My advice?

    1) Do whatever you think will make your kids happy
    2) Ignore everything on this forum including this post

    geordiemick00
    Free Member

    I’m viewing this from an ipad in comet!!!

    she’s at the age where all of her home work is still paper bassed, she loves apps and music and the ipad could sync with my mac for all that gubbins. I’m drwan to the ipad mainly because of the educational apps, games and no need to buy anti virus crap etc…

    thanks to you all for a healthy debate!!

    bikebouy
    Free Member

    Ohh the same old same old.. “he should”, “he shouldn’t”.

    Get the girl what she likes, if you have the £’s then do it. But you need not do it just for Xmas.. Do it at any time of the year, Xmas is about spending time with your family and giving/sharing the LUV, that I feel is way more expensive to give, easy to recieve and she’ll remember that for a very very very long time indeed.

    mattjg
    Free Member

    iPad.

    prezet
    Free Member

    I bet nobody would have batted an eyelid if you’d said you were spending £400 on a bike for your 10-year-old daughter.

    £400 for a 10 year old’s bike would seem very expensive too!

    I think, rereading this post that I was wrong. Like someone said, if the OP’s daughter has a real need for a laptop to do her homework etc on, then £400 isn’t a huge amount to spend. I think it’s just the iPad is perceived as a luxury item IMO.

    But I also agree with the above about maybe buying it outside of ‘christmas’, as it’s easy to get into a cycle of trying to outdo the previous year.

    5thElefant
    Free Member

    Get a grip. Buying a kid an educational toy at xmas is bad?

    My mate’s 3 year old has an ipad and that wasn’t a present.

    Nick
    Full Member

    £400 for a 10 year old’s bike would seem very expensive too!

    My 10 year old daughter loves her Isla Bikes Beinn 26, £349, she rides it for miles because it is light and works properly.

    Get her a laptop so she can use Excel/Word/Powerpoint, etc

    Oh yes I agree, get her trained up for a life of office based drudgery as early as possible 🙄

    TurnerGuy
    Free Member

    trouble with a laptop it is encourages poor posture using it.

    If they don’t need to move it around why not a desktop mac.

    You can’t really use a tablet for homework and other productive stuff, it is more email and mucking around, imho.

    prezet
    Free Member

    Oh yes I agree, get her trained up for a life of office based drudgery as early as possible

    Haha, I guess most schools use those too though, no?

    Alternatively, install Ubuntu, and tell her she can’t use it until she configures her own wireless and audio drivers… 😛

    stumpy01
    Full Member

    geordiemick00 – Member
    I’m viewing this from an ipad in comet!!!

    she’s at the age where all of her home work is still paper bassed, she loves apps and music and the ipad could sync with my mac for all that gubbins. I’m drwan to the ipad mainly because of the educational apps, games and no need to buy anti virus crap etc…

    thanks to you all for a healthy debate!!

    Have you decided, then?

    Sounds like you are gonna get the iPad, and probably had that in mind all the time….? 🙂

    I went against my better judgement and bought our daughter an Android tablet for her birthday, as she really wanted one. It hardly got used and had now been sold to go towards a laptop.

    On the laptop theme, she wants a netbook, but I’m standing firm on this one and getting a laptop. Am I right in doing do, or would a netbook be fine. She not a gamer, but it will be used for schoolwork

Viewing 40 posts - 81 through 120 (of 179 total)

The topic ‘£400 for a 10 year old Xmas pressie iPad 2 or lap top?’ is closed to new replies.