Laptop Rental

[aislingk15.livejournal.com]

I was wondering if anyone had experience with local places (or otherwise) for short-term laptop rental.  My personal laptop is heavier than is comfortable for travel, but I need more than my tablet when I'm going to do work or present at a conference.  It occurs to me that maybe an option is to rent a lightweight or 2-in-1 laptop for a week.  I know there are local locations of big businesses like Rent-a-Center and also some places that specifically rent computers and technology, but I'm wondering if anyone has actually done this and has thoughts about recommendations or risks to consider.

Comments

[paradoox.livejournal.com]

I have no experience with the answer to your question, but depending on how tech savvy you are, how often you want to do this, and how light the "rental" needs to be, you might consider buying a good used laptop from someplace like Ebay. I think you could get something reasonable for $200-$300 depending on how picky you were. I suspect you are looking at rental prices of at least $100 per week? Of course if you are running Mac OS, that probably won't work for you*. But, then if you were a Mac user, you probably wouldn't be complaining that your laptop was too heavy. (Not that I would ever recommend a Mac, especially for that reason.)

(* It is perfectly possible to run Mac OS 10.8 and probably 10.9 on a Dell D630, but most Mac users would shy away from that. Also I fear the D630 might be too heavy for what you want.)

[aislingk15.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the response. It's definitely a PC, as you predicted. Rent-a-Center seems to have weekly prices that are a lot lower than what I'm seeing at other places (which are around the amount that you mentioned), which makes me both intrigued and nervous. But it's true that if I were to do this a few times at $100-$150, then it might be worth considering a used purchase.

[paradoox.livejournal.com]

I suspect Rent A Center is hoping for someone to rent for months at a time. But, I do know for other things (like couches), they allow for one week rentals. So, hopefully they allow for one week rentals on laptops too.