what is the best antivirus for my macbook

There are several good ones. Norton, etc.

Sophos also offers a free home edition. http://www.sophos.com/en-us/products/free-tools/sophos-antivirus-for-mac-home-ed ition.aspx

Frankly, none of the above. If you really must have something for your peace of mind ClamXAV is free and all that you need.

To protect yourself from malware, the best thing to use is in the gap between your ears. Don't respond to fake 'scans' that pop up from nowhere; close the browser immediately if you get anything like that - don't try to close the 'scan' window or any other alert.

If you do get an accidental download, delete it immediately, do not run any installers, do not authenticate. In Safari preferences ensure the "open safe files after downloading" is not checked.

Preferably use Firefox with the NoScript extension; that will stop most if not all current trojans from even being triggered.

There aren't really any viruses for mac although there is malware. MacProtector or whatever it's called is the main problem and it is easy to uninstall, even though it is annoying.

If you are sending stuff to other pcs though it is probably good to have antivirus just so that you don't send a link or anything that has a virus.

Something that will greatly improve safari's security is to uncheck the "Enable Java" in the security tab of the preferences.

There are also extensions that block bad sites. WOT is good.

Mac malware is on the rise!

All the more reason to use the AV between your ears.

i saved an assignment from my mac on a jump drive.. I later went to print it on a work computer and it came up showing that the jump drive has a virus. My question is what should be done.. does that mean my computer have a virus , is thats so how can i have it removed or what can be done

the antivirus scanner on your work computer would have detected a windows virus. this would not affect your mac. it would appear that there is a windows virus on one of the drives connected to the mac, so you can install an antivirus like clamav (which only detects windows malware), or look for antivirus that protects against / detects both windows and os x malware.

Thanks i will try to do what you said and yes it helped