the fat is alot cheaper but you will get a network adapter with the slim. Less chance the disk drive will fail also in the slim. I've never seen it happen alot but it could happen. I guess the slim is the better of the two but your not going to be playing the FF online game because lack of a Hard drive.

I'm 19 years old and am buying myself a PS2 for christmas. I see nothing wrong with buying one there are over 1000's of great games you can find at any eb or gamestop. The Wii is a great idea but it's out of stock everywhere and if you find one your pretty lucky. There are also going to be games released way into 2008 for pS2 including motion sensing games like golf, pool and racing. I know PS2 is outdated and will be dead to production, but for right now it's a great value. Unlike the majority of people that either can afford Ps3 or whose parents can. I can't and wont untill next years holiday, but on the bright side I can play all my favorite Ps2 games on the Ps3 which makes a great blue ray player for the rest of the family. The choice is yours on what to do, but even if you go with Ps2, games arn't that hard to come by for a really good price and almost all second hand games are checked for scratches and abuse. In my opinion your Seven year old will be highly entertained untill he can get his hands on something new next year or in the future.

Get an Ebay account and sell em... :)

Or set up whichever appeals to your interest. God of war is a really good game and can be short if your used to long term games.