just bought one for my 8 yo DS to see how he took care of it. It was a little frustrating for me to add music to it, but only cause I was trying to do it from iTunes and I didn't "get" that I had to convert the music we had into
mp3 format. once I got that it was a piece of cake.
I think it is a great precursor to a more expensive player, like iPod.
The only thing I DON'T like about it (compared to iPods) is that there is no way of setting a volume control. I hate when he listens to music too loud!