<i>If its a game, you can rent it, or borrow it from some friend.</i><p>Ah, not if it's a DRM'd PC game.  Many allow it, but try doing that with a Steam game.  You're stuck with the often-inaccurate demo version of the game.  And if you're talking about a console game, where do you go and who do you know to find <i>all</i> games you may be interested in?  I generally have less than 10% success rate when visiting rental places, and that's not including foreign language titles that aren't available <i>anywhere</i> here.<p>Reviews are extremely poor substitutes for a good demo, in the same way that arm-chair theorizing is a poor substitute for field experience.  And don't feed me bullshit about movie trailers being in any way a good measurement of what the movie will be like.  Does reading a book really get you to understand what army life is like?  To make matters worse, good demos are hard to come by, as most are relatively crippled compared to what you'd be buying (games <i>and</i> regular apps).  If the demo doesn't <i>demonstrate</i> why I'd want it, or implies things that aren't true, I claim false advertising.  And this is assuming there even <i>is</i> a demo version.