I (and others on here) would recommend Avast as the best choice for a free AV program. Add to this Zone Alarm as your free firewall.

For a paid for AV program (always a better choice than free) NOD32 is about the best there is. It has a sightly quirky settings method, but keeping it at the defaults on isntall is fine anyway.

UK price for a THREE year licence is only £54 - very good value, and not a lot to spend on protection of your nice new laptop.

Dave