PlayStation emulation

Hello everyone
Not sure if I should post about PS here, but here goes.

Background to thread:
13 year old grandson has PS2 and wants a PS3 (pref. Slim) for Christmas. He wants to play his PS2 games, which I am told are not compatible with PS3. I have been informed about emulation of PS2 games to a PC, but am not sure this is legal. Not being a Gamer myself, I have no knowledge with this. Can anyone help here? Is it possible to find PS2 games that are also available as PC games?

His PC is currently low spec, but motherboard, RAM, graphics can be upgraded, as I built it over a year ago with that in mind.

All advice and information is welcome and appreciated.

Up until recently it would have been deemed illegal. But recent changes in the UK allows for Digital media to be "ripped" allowing it to be used on different formats. (yes even ripping a CD to itunes was considered "illegal""

So technically playing a game on an emulator would be considered a change of media player.

And not very many console games come out for the PC either. Or it could have only changed recently, I'm not entirely certain. One racing series that's the exception to this is the Need For Speed series. They made NFS games for both the console & PC.

To my knowledge, it's legal in the U.S. to emulate console games on PC's, depending on the console, and as long as you own the original console.

Edit: I read about this some time ago, so it could've changed, or it only applied to the UK, I don't know anymore.