Bought a new laptop, a funcy ThinkPad, running W10 pro.

Not switched it on yet coz:

set up with my outlook account or not?

Do I need anti-virus (it’s pro, not home)? Will defender be good enough (I don’t intentionally surf dodgy websites, but there’s dodgy enough links on here if you get logged off, again…)?

Yes set it up with your MS account, use OneDrive to shadow photos & documents to the cloud and configure BitLocker if it’s got it.   Defender is fine.  (from someone who had a laptop stolen recently where some of these things hadn’t been done).

Right.

Microsoft have this concept called a ‘Microsoft account’. This is meant to be one account that holds your identity across multiple things, and when you log into your PC it knows who you are (like an iCloud account on Apple). There are lots of accounts that can function as Microsoft account, and confusingly the accounts Microsoft provide have lots of different names e.g. @live.co.uk @microsoft.com or whatever. Your outlook.com email address will be a Microsoft account. So when you turn on your new computer, it’ll ask you to log in during the setup process, and you put your Outlook address in there. It’ll then know who you are and your email etc will all be there.

You do not need anti-virus, it’s built in now.

I’m aware of the account thing (I have it on my other W10 laptop). It looks like it’s worth setting it up as the log on/user account so I’ll do that then.

Good to hear pro is sorted, don’t know why I thought it might not be, maybe my old and dying W7 laptop telling me no anti-virus detected after I stripped off norton the other week….

ETA: sorry, meant to say thanks for the responses, it’s appreciated.

Things are much better these days. W7 was ten years ago, that’s forever in IT land.

Ooo, that worked. I’ve a P50 at work, this new P43s is very nice (took an upgrade to the default screen, but not the ultra expensive super duper one)… 🤪

On W7, Microsoft Security Essentials is a separate download. With W10 Defender will kick in automatically if there’s no AV installed.

A new off-the-shelf box will almost certainly come with some form of paid-for AV, probably either McAfee or Norton, which will work for 30 days and then go “credit card please.” Uninstall it.

The best AV on the planet these days is “don’t click on stupid shit.”

I seem to be running windows defender antivirus (can’t see any third party AV…).

Brand new machine, bought off Lenovo website (shipped direct from China!)…