Wow! I must say, you have to have some serious trust in your 7 year old son to invest in such a gift. PSP's arent exactly kid tough, if you know what I mean.
As far as firmware and playing games goes, its all up to what your son wants to do with it. General use? U have no problem. Buy any PSP you like and you are guaranteed to be able to play all commercial games from any region of the world. If a game requires a higher firmware to play it, its only a matter of updating the firmware using the same game UMD that asks for the newer version..
However, if you want to use the PSP for yourself, I would recommend buying one that is at firmware 2.0 and no higher. There are a TON of amazing homebrew programs ranging from emulators (that let u play your favourite older home consoles on the unit such as Super NES, Megadrive, etc..), to programs that let you stream Internet Radio, use the PSP as a remote.. etc...
The choice is yours.
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