Hello there, i am a windows user, i have never used a mac before so please excuse my ignorance. A friend of mine is buying a laptop with OS X (what ever that means??) she wants to know does she require an anti virus on this system? if so which is the best for mac, prefrably something free, is avg available for mac?? i know i can google this, and i most proberbly get abuse for this, but here goes, what is mac?? Thanks you

I've got several macs, never used anti-virus or spyware programs on any of them. As of right now, there are no viruses for Macs in the wild, just proof of concept viruses. That's not to say it can't/won't happen sooner or later, just no real need to worry right now. ClamXav is a free anti-virus program for Macs. About the only reason to run such a program on a Mac is so you don't forward a virus in an e-mail to a Windows user. If the machine is not behind a router firewall, make sure to turn on OS X's built-in firewall.

No viruses yet..and i know for sure that Virex won't stop PC viruses from getting passed on, as it can't identify any of them..I read somewhere (in a read me, I think), that only mac specific viruses are searched for, but the only ones in existence are very old classic mac os viruses. I did a test as I had a badly infected winnt pc drive I was going to wipe, so I had Virex scan all the files on a disk image of it I mounted on the mac. It reported no viruses at all, despite AVG having previously reported script viruses, worms and bots on the same install... So since there's no mac viruses, for now, unless you know for sure that your AV will catch the windows ones you could pass on, AV on a mac is worse than useless, as it could incorrectly make you think you;re passing on clean mail or files I still have Virex on my disk, but it's turned off for now...