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

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

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)?

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…

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.

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.

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. 🙄

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

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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

iPad.

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.

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.

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….? 🙂