Hi

I have an original iPad and will be getting a new iPad in a week. I plan to give my old iPad to my son, and I want him to be able to retain the purchases on that iPad. He has, however, his own iTunes account and will want to make purchases himself.

Is there a way of enabling his account without losing the purchases already on the iPad. And is there any risk of doing this to m new iPad and transferring and syncing it to set it up?

Please help

Shouldn't be a problem. The old apps will stay on the IPad. Itunes will import those apps when he first syncs up. The only problem he will have is updating the apps. Since they were purchased under your ID, he will not be able to update those apps without your ID credentials.

Great - so for a dummy like me, what is the procedure for registering the new apple id on my old iPad for my son (whilst retaining my purchases) to use his own, and for me to set up my new one with my Personal id?

Have you heard about home sharing? it enables you to share your iTunes content and apps between family members.Check out this link.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3819

I found the following response from KayKayKay on another thread. I'm pretty sure it will work because I did something similar myself when I was trying to decide about moving from an Android tablet to iPad. I borrowed a friend's iPad and changed the Apple ID to mine (from when I had an iPod) and downloaded some of my purchases. I left a couple of them on there for her but I changed the iPad back to her Apple ID. There was no problem getting apps downloaded using either account. As far as backing up and syncing, I can't help you there, but the apps can definitely be placed on son's device, IMHO.

KayKayKay's reply:

"Sounds like you've bought apps on two separate iTunes accounts. You can reload purchased apps from both accounts on one iPad, but you must log off one account and sign back in under the other account. From iTunes app, scroll to bottom left and click on your Apple ID, sign out, then sign back in under the other account. Then from App Store app, click on Purchased to see what you've got on that account. From there, you can reload apps.

By the way, once you've created multiple iTunes accounts, Apple will not (at least for now) let you merge them."