Which would you rather give a 10 year old? A brand new, $2000 machine, or an antiquated, non-standard machine that you'd already paid for which could entertain the kids and allow them to write letters to grandma and play music mods for free?
Eek, neither. A Playstation 2 would be a better (and less finacially draining) choice. It's more reasonable to get a PC for a family, but my neice for one was more interested in playing with DPaint on a vanilla A1200 than trying to get slow WindowsXP to do anything. In fact, in my own experience, the family PC just generates fights and unnecessary problems, constantly sucks away money, and is usually left to gather dust anyway.
Anyway, this is completely OT, so you can safely ignore this. I agree with you about the ####### language matter, though ;-)
