So my family bought a laptop at Best Buy a couple of weeks ago, and I have to tell you, they are out to squeeze every penny from the experience.  Not that making money is wrong - after all, that is why everyone is in business.  Preying on the inexperience of consumers is another thing.  I politely listened to the menu of services that were offered along with my laptop and found it very interesting.  If I didn't know better, I would have probably been intimidated into spending another 20% of the purchase price in extra services.

What services are offered?  Mostly backup, optimization, and virus protection.  All things that need to be done on the laptop.  I opted to do those things myself as I have the experience.

If you are purchasing a computer at Best Buy, or another retailer that is offering the same kind of services, you may want to consider trying to do the work yourself.  Why waste the time?  I believe you will spend that time now, or later.  As a personal computer user, you are going to have to either learn how to perform the work  yourself or you will have to pay someone to do the work for you.  Now it is fine if you opt to pay - it's your money.  Knowing what to do when things go wrong is valuable.

For virus protection, I've always had great success with the FREE AVG product.  Check out this link to get free AVG Antivirus software.

For general backup, Windows has some nice tools to help you with that.  Your computer also includes a utility to create system disks.  When you first start the computer, it will often prompt you to make those disks.  TAKE the TIME to do it!  It will help you if things go wrong later.