Nintendo question

susiestar

Roll With It
A few months ago we told thank you if he worked and saved up half the price of a nintendo ds lite we would pay half the cost. He had to earn at least 1/4 of the total price by doing chores and not by using birthday/christmas money.

This was before husband lost his job. Now thank you has the money and I feel we should follow through.

The question is to choose the ds lite or dsi. I don't know much about either, except that husband has a ds lite and they both enjoy it. I would vastly prefer to get a wii, but that probably won't be an option if we do the dsi. I know dsi is newer, but I cannot see much benefit to having the camera or internet browsing for a 10yo. I don't want him on the internet on it. He is pretty good about rules, so I don't see too much problem unless he gets peer pressure to go online.

Do your kids have either of these? Which would you recommend?

Thanks. Oh, husband is a diehard nintendo fan, so it is nintendo or nothing. Playstation and xbox are not options, largely because past problems with their lack of parental support and the excellent support nintendo has given us with Wiz. I don't know much about any of the systems, other than we have the game boy advances and they still work.
 

gcvmom

Here we go again!
I will ask my kids in the morning... difficult child 1 bought his DSi last year and loves it. difficult child 2 and easy child just bought theirs tonight with their xmas/birthday/allowance money -- they've been coveting difficult child 1's forever. I set parental controls on ALL theirs to limit what they can do on the internet as well as the types of games they can play. You use a pin as well as a backup password. As far as features go and what the appeal is, I'll have to ask them for you. :)
 

crazymama30

Active Member
dsi has more internet access than ds (or at least this is my understanding) and costs more. We went with the ds lite for difficult child and he loves it
 

AnnieO

Shooting from the Hip
I have the DS lite myself and I love it. He can play with your husband as when they're close they can connect wirelessly. Honestly a 10-y/o wth internet can get around all kinds of parental controls.

...If he is hard on stuff, get the Nerf Armor too. Cheap way to keep it from breaking.
 

jal

Member
We got difficult child Nintendo DS last xmas. He loves it. We also have the old Nintendo 64 and Playstation 2. He plays all about equally, depending on the game du jour. It has been a nice little system and he likes to take it on longer car rides. It has helped a lot in situations where I need his cooperation. Sad, I know, but when you have difficult child's, you'll pull out any trick.
 

susiestar

Roll With It
husband used a bonus to buy a ds lite a year or so ago. They both love it. The big push for the ds is because the inlaws keep getting thank you a ds game each year. He is too polite to tell them he doesn't have a system to play it on, and he doesn't want to hurt their feelings by returning it. Knowing this, and given difficult child's internet sneaking, we are fine with a ds lite.

thank you, luckily, does not want the dsi. Has no need for the internet, according to him, because he never wants to go anywhere online that he cannot already go. He also has seen the camera (gma has a dsi) and is far from impressed. He has had a digital camera for years, so that one is not as good as his "old" one.

Lucky me. Saved from nintendo strife. There are used ones. If one comes available in the next week or two at gamestop then we might do that. Cost savings are not that much, so we may just do a new one. I kind of prefer the new because nintendo is great with warranties (Jessie's GBA had a screen die and it was replaced and overnighted back to us less than 10 days after we sent it in, and the warranty was extended for a year past that date on the entire system.) Nintendo has also impressed us with parental support from back when Wiz was signing himself up for things on their site. We learned of this because they sent us an email, LOL at Wiz' attempts to fool them.

I do know that the ds lite has a wifi card that can be purchased. Wiz tried to slip that past my folks too. He somehow thought they would not know what a wifi card was, or what the packaging meant. LOL at him again! They had computers before they had grandkids - he ALWAYS forgets this and the fact that Gpa reads computer catalogs for fun (Aspie, ya think?!).

Anyway, thanks for the input. The ds lite will do what he wants. No need for the dsi, in my opinion.

Happy New Year (or Mew Year as Miss Gracie Lou Freebush says. For some reason she is talkative tonight. She almost NEVER talks unless she locks herself in somewhere. )
 

Marguerite

Active Member
Another important point in favour of the DS lite - compatibility with husband's DS. I believe the DSi won't allow a lot of the older games. I could be wrong.

BUT - in our family, we have the older DS. Predating the DS lite. And using that, difficult child 3 has been able to access the internet just about everywhere. It was rather amusing about 18 months ago at school, difficult child 3 was playing with his DS while waiting for his computing studies teacher to arrive for a personal lesson. Teacher arrived, difficult child 3 asked, "What's the school computer network password again?" and teacher automatically told him. Then said, "Hang on- where's your computer?"
difficult child 3 said, "Don't need one. I'm now online - thank you - using the DS."
Teacher said, "How did you do that? I didn't know you could do that!" [some computer teacher!]
So difficult child 3 showed him how he could go online and surf the net using the school's network to piggyback.

And for several years before, from the time we got the dS for him, we'd be driving along the highway through the city and suburbs and difficult child 3 would say, "There's a network I can use. There's another one..." and if we were stuck in traffic and the car not moving, he often had his pick of multiple networks to go online with. Businesses these days are more careful about password protection, but a lot of coffee shops here advertise "free WiFi". You think, that's just for customers. But difficult child 3 would sit outside and surf the net for free. Or in the mall when McDonalds had free WiFi, difficult child 3 found it was more peaceful to sit on the floor above, which was outside the supermarket where we mostly do our grocery shopping. The WiFi signal access expands in a sphere from the centre and difficult child 3 would sit right above the store for a strong, free signal.

And this is with a very old, first-run DS.

difficult child 3 has hhis DS surgically attached. At least that is how it seems. So we will be out in public and if he sees another kid playing, difficult child 3 will approach the other kid and instigate a joint game. When we took mother in law to the hospital just after Christmas, there was a younger kid in the waiting room with his mother and sister (little sis was the patient) and difficult child 3 & the boy were soon playing, deeply engrossed. When the mother and little girl were called in by the doctor, she said to her son, "Stay here, we won't be long," and left him there playing games across the room with difficult child 3.
We've been on long train trips - same story. It's actually been quite good for difficult child 3's social skills, although I would prefer to be able to monitor his online gaming. However, my biggest concern is his hamfistedness with social skills, not that he is likely to be led astray or recruited by a pedophile. We talk to him about these risks and if there were any approach for a personal meeting, difficult child 3 would tell us. But that is one of the positive side effects of his Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD). He's getting too old to be of interest t a pedophile anyway. Plus I wouldn't want to be in their shoes if they tried!

Marg
 

gcvmom

Here we go again!
Marg is right in that the DSi will not support the older Gameboy games, only Nintendo DS games, whereas the DS lite plays all the older games plus the DS games.

The DSi also has apps you can get (costing up to $5) like a Flipnotes Studio (lets you make mini animations), photo apps (come with it) to use with the built-in camera, Picto Chat (a sort of instant message system that lets you draw stuff), to name a few.

The screen on the DSi is bigger and brighter as well. And the internet access can be restricted using parental controls.

So that's what my kids tell me, in a nutshell. :)
 

susiestar

Roll With It
Here you have to buy a separate wifi card to use a ds lite on the internet. You can connect with other ds systems, but not the internet. Wiz managed in some shady way to acquire enough money to purchase a ds lite and the wifi thingy about two months after he moved to my parents. Ds lite had not been out long.

There is also a card called an R4, or something similar. It lets you download stuff off of the internet like games for the ds. In the US it is illegal to download games unless you pay for them, and many many games are illegally traded via these cards. Mattsmom mentioned them so I looked into them for Wiz and husband. I know husband wouldn't mess with it much and Wiz would not be able to stay away from illegal downloads. So I was very careful to warn both of my parents about it. They are sure that Wiz won't try it.
 
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