[davemc]

A lot of manafactures now do ilok demos.
I personally like Sony stuff over Waves for what Sony have out. If you buy the waves pack you get a lot of different plugins. A lot are not the best sounding plugins around now although useful, although you get a lot of them .

See if your mate will let you play.
There are a lot of plugins out now which have come a long way from the early ren eq/comp etc. Just try them and see what you like