Ah yea, I've had issues with laptops in the past as well. Some of them turned out to be faulty RAM, others had faulty components on the motherboard, etc. To be honest, I've had 6 laptops in my life, and every last one of them, in some way, died before their time. I don't buy laptops anymore. My desktop hasn't had a single issue since the day I bought it, and it's at least 3 years old.
I guess if money isn't an issue for you, buying a new computer isn't a bad idea. I would just urge you to research and get something that's known to be solid. But if you're not down with spending a bunch of money, you might be better off isolating the issue and if the problem is repairable, even if it means replacing parts, going that route.
Regarding the virus thing, most good virus programs now days have an active scanner that checks all your incoming traffic/downloads/etc and severs the connection when it detects a virus being downloaded, so you really shouldn't need to actively scan your system. If your program doesn't do this, then you're bound to catch all sorts of crap and it will be unknown to you until you actually perform the scan, and then it may be too late depending on what the virus is programmed to do... since it's already on your computer and may have been run.
Another smart idea is using a firewall. I'm not talking about Windows firewall either. There are free firewalls out there that are really good at brickwalling your system so that nothing can get in without you specifically initiating the transfer yourself.
Most people view that level of protection as pointless, because as long as they can get to Facebook and download music they don't give a crap about what else is going on... and they're usually the people who end up needing help when something inevitably goes wrong.
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