A necessary purchase

I've just taken up a new school governor role and am really struggling to access word documents and a 365 email account via my iMac. So today we've looked around for a small laptop. There used to be at least three stores with electronic 'stuff' in them in our local shopping area. Now we are down to one. This is one of those purchases I need to see before I buy - although. when I think about it my preference would almost always be to shop for real