Testdriving a Mac laptop?

I'm going to be in the market to replace my laptop rather soon (definately waiting until Santa Rosa comes out.. I don't have any compelling reason to need to get something *right now*).

One of the systems I'm considering is either the Macbook or Macbook Pro.. being able to run Windows when necessary definately makes the Mac worthwhile looking at (I'd otherwise reject it out of hand).

OTOH, I have not used Mac OSX ever. I'm not sure how well a one button mouse will work. Essentially, I don't know if this would be the laptop for me. I would like to try one out, though.

Does the Apple store or anywhere else that sells Mac laptops offer some sort of "trial" period? If I could try one out to use as my main system for maybe a month or so, that would be greatly useful in making my decision.

BTW: I live in Canada (Toronto).

 

You can use any mouse you want. I've been using Microsoft 3 button optical mice ever since Macs have had USB ports.

If Toronto has an Apple Store, you can go there to kinda mess around with it. Otherwise, you are going to have to find a friend to loan you one.

Since you have a few months before Santa Rosa is announced, and actually ships, you could do something like buy an old Mac off something like Craigslist. Use it for a month or two and sell it again and maybe not lose any money.

You can also dual boot Windows so you can still use Windows software you still have.

 

Gee, I don't think you can "rent" a Mac from Apple, but you can certainly stay in the Apple Store for hours or ask an employee to just sit down and guide you through Mac OS X. As for the one-button mouse issue, its not that big of a deal. You can Ctrl-Click for right-click or two-fingered tap on touchpad, there's many ways of doing right clicks and its not a big deal anymore.

As I said before, I don't think you can "rent out" or "test drive" a Mac in the way that you take it home and return it in a month, but just go to an Apple Store and sit down, try it out, ask a customer service guy to walk you through Mac OS X. That's probably the closest you can get to actually "test driving" a Mac for a month.

 

There is an apple store at the Eaton's center.

3rd floor, on the queen street side. on the same side as the second cup

 

I think he's talking about the left-click only button on the touchpad, and not a mouse itself. Because now even Apple's Mighty Mouse has a right-click.

Actually, maybe you are talking about using a mouse and not a touchpad. Well, almost any mouse works for Mac, and as I said above, even Apple's mouse has a right click now.

 

If you are concerned about the mouse on the MB or MBP itself having only one button, one nice feature they do offer is "two-finger right-clicking".... essentially, if you just hold two fingers down on the trackpad and then click the mouse button, it acts as a right-click. Once you get used to it, it's pretty natural and works quite well (I actually kind of prefer this method now, since I don't need to adjust my thumb position to hit the right mouse button).

And as others have mentioned, the right click works normally with any external mouse.

 

hmm...well, my current macbook pro is kind of damaged because i dropped it. a new one is arriving on monday. im leaving for italy on the 29th, and the damaged one will just be sitting on my desk. it still works fine.

i COULD let you borrow it until i get back from my trip, i live in london so shipping would be a breeze. just dont know if i should trust you.

 

Apple has a 15 days return period. You could buy one, and test it out, return it if you don't like it. But I'm not sure how much they would charge for stuff like restocking.

 

Pretty sure it's a 10% restocking fee unless there's something wrong with it.

 

Buy a G4 450MHz for like $250.

Use it for a few weeks. Sell it for $250.

It will be slow, but, otherwise, it will run some variant of OS X.