Postal Letter - What happens if you dont get virus protection on a laptop?

What happens if you dont get virus protection on a laptop?

i purchased a laptop but it will probably be at least a couple months till i can get virus protection for it. i probably wont be going on the internet a lot cause i dont have wireless at my house. would this screw up the computer?

Public Comments

A couple of months before you can download a free anti-virus software such as AVG Free or Malwarebytes? Then you deserve viruses if you won't download either of those.
Totally not! Viruses usually occur on your computer when you surf the internet. You should not have any problems. Plus, your computer will run faster if you don't have an antivirus program. However, it is essential that you get one.
If you completely avoid the internet and completely avoid putting any usb drives, cd roms or floppy discs into your computer, then it won't get a virus - period. If you want a fast computer that's virus-proof, get Ubuntu Linux for free. Yup, Ubuntu is virus-proof and completely replaces Windows.
u SHOULD HAVE AN ATIVIRUS even IF U DONT GO ONLINE ALL THE TIME. its enough to get on ONCE and go to ONE website, or check ONE email. BOOM! VIRUS! DOWNLOAD AVAST. for viruses DOWNLOAD MALWAREBYTES for malware and spyware
Think about buying a brand new car and then choosing to not have insurance on it. Personally, I would not go onto the internet at all until after you have installed some form of anti virus software. Whatever you paid for that laptop could very easily be money down the drain if you should get a computer virus with no defense. Believe me the price of virus protection is well worth the peace of mind.
Nothing will happen to it if you keep it completely away from everything, as Jacob said. However, you don't have to wait until you can afford protection because there is plenty of really good, free stuff available. The trick is knowing where you can trust. I suggest these things: WOT - can be added to a few different browsers and gives you safety ratings for websites. You'll be able to tell who to trust. http://mywot.com/ Major Geeks - they test everything before making it available for download and tell you what they think is really good. Some stuff has to be bought, some is try-before-you-buy (shareware) and some is plain free. http://majorgeeks.com/ And they offer a guide to securing your computer properly: http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=44525 Bleeping Computer offer targetted guides should you be unfortunate enough to pick up malware: http://bleepingcomputer.com/virus-removal Major Geeks offers a comprehensive malware cleaning guide: http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=35407 Both Major Geeks and Bleeping Computer have you use free, safe software for cleaning and give more help in their forums if you need it. And I suggest not using IE as your main browser. Here is some info I put together about Firefox: http://freewebs.com/yahooqs/fgl.html#firefox Other browsers that are recommended are Opera, Safari, Google Chrome OR Iron if you don't like Google Chromes phone-home features. I'll update that page with links for these browsers and some other info about a sneaky trick Microsoft has played on Firefox in a day or so. Meantime, google for them and here is the link re Microsoft: http://www.grc.com/sn/sn-199.htm - only bother with this if you decide to use Firefox and then only after you start getting the hang of addons.
Personally I feel the chance would get a virus would be very minimal if your router has an SPI firewall (and your lappy is running through it). By saying that, it doesn't mean it won't happen though. All it takes is going online once to get malware or a "virus". Great protection software for windows is completely free. Here are the ones I recommend (google for them. www.download.com is a safe site to get them from) Comodo Firewall (protects your from hackers) Avast!Free (protects you from your own mistakes...even the best make errors) Malwarebytes (has a lot of false positives though) spybot search and destroy and use firefox or opera to browser the web (they are both secure, firefox a little bit more so, but opera IMO is better). Even with all this protection, you still are never 100% safe. The only way to be 100% secure is to never go online. Having all these running will greatly reduce the chance of anything happening though. If you are tech savvy I would check out the Linux Mint operating system to dual boot with Windows, it is a lot faster and there are many benefits to it. I won't say it is easy, but with a distro such as Linux Mint, it is very simple and if you give the effort, you could easily do it. If you wish to give it a try, go to my profile and shoot me an email and I would be glad to give you a walkthrough on how to do it.
Wow. All these answers and nobody gave you a link to a free anti-virus! Most people do not BUY anti-virus software because there are plenty of good ones available for free that are perfectly adequate for the typical home or SOHO user. I would suggest Avast, Avast now includes anti-virus, anti-spyware capability and anti-rootkit components. And all for the low low price of free. You can get it here: http://www.avast.com/free-antivirus-download The new Avast 5 kicks some serious keister! (Always use only 1 A-V...You must NEVER use more than one anti-virus, Even an expired anti-virus can cause a major conflict... did I mention that you MUST uninstall any and all, old anti-virus products?) And no, it is not a good idea to go w/o an anti-virus. Do you know how much it costs to "disinfect" a computer with a virus? Plus there is a good chance that you would lose all your data as well.
You run the risk of lowering your computer security - making it vulnerable to infections and evasions of all sorts.
It is not good I suggest you download a tool http://gigilee034.blog.com/