so what game might I like? I want one where my point of view can be IN the tank or have my head stuck out. I want to use a joy stick. And I would like to play against my nephew. Eye candy is great but so many other things are more important.

Your choices are rather limited if you want to play 1v1 against your nephew. TvT and PE are the only 2 I can think of that fit the bill. If you don't mind lots of other players in the game, then WW2OL and WOT are worth a look. If you don't mind modern, then SB is the best. I have not played M4 tank platoon, so I can not say how it plays. It has no eye candy, so it gets crushed by the public.

I bought and installed PE special edition from GOG. Well, that I got really is 12 year old graphics. Seems like fun like EAW. Then I read the review here at SimHQ on T-34 vs. Tiger. That looks pretty good. Seems like the game play is good from a Youtub video I looked at. But I wonder if it might be to difficult for my ten year old nephew.

I see it has multi-player and I hope I can play it with just the two of us. But his machine may not have the power to play it.

If you are looking for a good single player WW2 tank sim there's no real alternative to Steel Fury in terms of mods, missions, models and an active community.TvsT is dead both MP and SP( 12 missions repetitive and full of bugs).Only Zeewolf is making mods and missions for TvsT but it's $ 60 a year every year and progress is slow and limited.Panzer Elite is nice but dated in every aspect( it's 14 years old.If you are interested in learning more about Steel Fury then join us on the Graviteam.com Steel Fury forum and you'll see for yourself!

so it looks like PE is it as it has multi player and i guess is stable. He does not seem to mind the poor graphics.

If you are going for PE make sure you get the PPX-2 mod which adds better graphics, modelling, physics etc...Check the PEDG forum.
Aldobrit44, Slomo and other are very helpful and will help you through the mods and stuff.

Installed my Gog version of Panzer Elite. Where I should start installing mods?

If you are looking for mods, a good place to start would be on the PEDG forums. http://pedg.yuku.com/directory