1st steps for a new Mac Book pro user?!

Welcome back to the Mac, Your Mac comes secured for the most part, to get the latest updates you will need to connect your system to the internet and click the Apple menu and then click software update. Then have fun with your new MB. This link can help too. http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2788

Securing your Mac is easy... do nothing! 🙂 Seriously, the Mac is fairly secure to start with, and the weakest point in its security is you. The biggest risk right now is the recent outbreak of trojans. If, while surfing the web, you get alerts about how you have viruses and need to install some software, ignore it, and delete anything that gets downloaded. For more information, see:

http://www.reedcorner.net/news.php/?p=138

(* Disclaimer: links to my pages may give me compensation, and should not be taken as endorsement of my services by Apple.)

As far as updates go, just let Software Update do its thing.

For maintenance, again, do nothing. Well, with one exception: I generally recommend using Disk Utility to verify the disk (not verify permissions) before installing any system updates. If any problems are found, you should immediately reboot from your Mac OS X install disk and use Disk Utility (in the Utilities menu) from there to repair the hard drive.

There are many utilities that try to convince you to buy them to do regular "cleaning", and at least one (MacKeeper) uses some very unethical marketing practices. Don't fall for it. The kind of cleaning these utilities do is completely unnecessary and may even decrease the performance of your Mac or damage the system.

I stumbled across what looked like ''malware'' while on Google, text, this time, not ''images''-the site was for ''antiques'' and it switched at once to a ''fake''[?] site saying ''your computer is running unsafe programmes'' and it showed the same ''safari'' window as the macdefender did on may 2nd. I force Quit safari, but I did notice the switched-to 'URL?' address was made up of 55 numbers and dots, dashes and the only letters that were together were ''cedebf''

I am very new to computers, as mentioned in other posts, and am like ''b.Leev'' in that I am now really wary of going on the net, but am following advice given by forum members, eg don't run an admin account, and switch to Firefox instead of safari, plus the ''uncheck open''safe'' downloads box''.

Even a long term computer user[Windows] got scammed by a dodgy net scam, it asked for her credit card details to send her some info on ''dog training'' and she noted that the scam site was taking money from her account regularly!. This is a woman otherwise very sensible,and surprise surprise, not a word of ''training info'' was emailed to her.In many ways the net makes people ''lazy'' as in pre-net days, people would read books and go to actual classes in such matters.

I would suggest buying a portable external hard drive(no power cord needed type). Set up Time Machine on the drive.

I know it is rare but my hard drive crashed after 2 weeks, I was saved by my external hard drive with time machine. I only lost about 10 minutes of work.