David,
Symantec Endpoit Protection is complex piece of software with number of advanced features and as such might not be something, as in your own words, a newbie should start with. Out-of-the-box functionality is there and can do the job but it does need a fair bit of tuning to perform at its best.
What you need is something simple that you can download, install and use with out spending too much time on getting familiar with and setting up. One such solutions might be
Miscrosoft Security Essentials which povides decent protection, is easy and completely free to use and needs almost nothing to set up. It can be used as-is as soon as the setup and initial definition update is done. There are perhaps some better solutions out there but I found MSSE to be best suited for the beginners. Once you get more familiar with the concept of anti virus protection you may want to move to some more complex solution
Cheers.