Updating The Virus Scanner

The virus scanner I had on my old computer, I didn't keep it updated. I would update it occasionally. It had a "automatic" updating checkbox in it, but somehow it quit working and I would have to update it manually.

I might not get around to it for a couple of months. Then if I rebooted the computer for some reason, it would tell me the definitions were over a month old, etc. But it didn't do too much nagging.

Now I have a new computer and a new virus scanning program (Norton 2010), and it's apparently updating all the time. Frankly, I don't know what there would be to update every few minutes. But if I look, it always says something like "Definition Updates: 5 minutes ago." Are there new virus updates literally every few minutes? That makes it sound like quite a struggle to keep up, if there's a new virus every few minutes. So I don't know what's going on precisely.

At times, it seems like it's slowing down the whole computer with all its activity. But I guess they're playing on the "What you don't know" factor. If it's that deadly out there, that we need constant updates, 12 or so per hour, then we definitely need them.