Alan Penn wrote:

Hope those in the US can translate the terminology.
Question: If you could only have one of these machines which one would
you choose?

This will (undoubtedly) be a nearly interminable thread, but ....

Depends a lot on what you have available or want to use as starting
stock.

If you want to buy rough lumber, you'll find both almost indispensable.
If you can get a good supply of S2S material, you can do a lot w/o the
thicknesser, but virtually all joinery starts w/ a straight edge square
to the surface. Thus I would recommend the jointer/planer first in that
case.

To add to my reasoning, in most US cities it is possible to find either
vo-tech schools or small cabinet shops where one can either enroll for
minimal cost or pay a small price and get lumber surfaced, thus
minimizing the need for a thicknesser/planer until one gets to the point
of doing a significant amount of work.

Of course, all operations can be done w/ hand tools and one should
learn to do so simply as a matter of course, but unless one is into pure
reproduction there's no reason imo not to use machines where
appropriate.

HTH...and, of course, IMO, YMMV, $0.02 (US), etc., ...