Laptop help!

Probably a silly question but I have got to 36 having never owned my own laptop so I'm clueless! I've always had a work laptop but work then handles the software and antivirus etc. So my question is, if I buy a laptop does it come with excel and word etc? Is it free to use? Or do you buy a one off download or is it like a yearly license you have to buy? Same question for antivirus.. are these just part of the laptop build when you buy it? Sorry if these are daft questions, I'm taking on a charity role and I can't use my work laptop for that but I also want to keep the cost of buying and running a personal laptop minimal as it's a voluntary role! TIA for any advice!

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You would need to buy a yearly subscription for both. You could look at a bundle at Currys for example, its something like 100 for a year.

@Marije oh wow that's so much, do people really pay that every year?!

Microsoft office needs a subscription for word etc and it can be pretty expensive. There are some free alternatives that you can use like google docs, google also has sheets and slides which is basically excel and PowerPoint. Very similar so worth looking into. Your laptop will probably just come with windows security stuff on it, I know windows 10 & 11 has anti virus stuff built in, rather than a dedicated anti virus. tbh it’s not bad I haven’t used any paid for anti virus software in years and I’ve been fine I’m just always careful about what I download and open, and windows picks up the rest. If you aren’t tech savvy or will be downloading a lot then things like Norton start at around £20 for a years subscription but that does go up after the first year.

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