downloading sophos anti-virus issues

You could probably get someone to download it for you and send it to you on CD.

However, considering Sophos pushes a virus update roughly  6 times per day, plus a product engine update roughly once a month, plus a full product upgrade roughly once every 6 months, you're going to have to find a dependable way of getting regular updates.  Sophos Antivirus products are not intended for a primarily offline environment.

Note: using ANY modern AV product with out of date detection files can be very dangerous, as this gives the user the feeling that they are protected by the product, when they are  likely not protected at all from the malware currently spreading.  Behavioural detection methods are still useful, but their usefulness is significantly limited.

That said, an off-line (or dialup) Mac isn't likely to have many significant malware issues.  Ensure that you use a regular user account (not a default Administrator account) for day-to-day activities, keep your incoming and outgoing firewalls enabled, keep Time Machine backups and run diff periodically (or use a program like Compare Folders) to verify that your important filies haven't been modified.  Then, when you get a chance to run an on-demand AV scan every once in a while, it is much less likely that you will have become compromised since the last scan.

You could probably get someone to download it for you and send it to you on CD.

However, considering Sophos pushes a virus update roughly  6 times per day, plus a product engine update roughly once a month, plus a full product upgrade roughly once every 6 months, you're going to have to find a dependable way of getting regular updates.  Sophos Antivirus products are not intended for a primarily offline environment.

Note: using ANY modern AV product with out of date detection files can be very dangerous, as this gives the user the feeling that they are protected by the product, when they are  likely not protected at all from the malware currently spreading.  Behavioural detection methods are still useful, but their usefulness is significantly limited.

That said, an off-line (or dialup) Mac isn't likely to have many significant malware issues.  Ensure that you use a regular user account (not a default Administrator account) for day-to-day activities, keep your incoming and outgoing firewalls enabled, keep Time Machine backups and run diff periodically (or use a program like Compare Folders) to verify that your important filies haven't been modified.  Then, when you get a chance to run an on-demand AV scan every once in a while, it is much less likely that you will have become compromised since the last scan.