User:PEAR/Pocket Antivirus Archive



Pocket Antivirus is an antivirus application for Palm OS developed by JSJ Software. Pocket Antivirus downloads new virus definitions wirelessly and provides users with a list of viruses it currently protects against. Pocket Antivirus also offers a built-in FAQ, Wireless Tech Support, and a log of security related events. Pocket Antivirus currently sells for 19.95 US Dollars.

Pocket Antivirus is often considered the best antivirus application for Palm OS.

Protection
Pocket Antivirus protects users against all four existing viruses for Palm OS; Liberty, Phage, PEMagic, and Vapor.

Pocket Antivirus scans for viruses by opening each database and comparing the contents of its resources, with a table containing MD5 hashes of known malicous code, this method is slower but slightly more reliable than the method used by competitors such as Mini Antivirus.

While scanning versions of Pocket Antivirus predating version 5.0 display a green or blue progress bar, versions 5.0 and greater of Pocket Antivirus instead display a list with the names of the files displayed as they are scanned and whether or not they contain malicous code.

With the release of Pocket Antivirus 6.0 JSJ Software greatly improved the scanning time so virus scans were as much as 4 times faster than those in the previous version, Pocket Antivirus 5.7.

Updates
JSJ Software frequently releases updates which can be downloaded with Pocket Antivirus' wireless update feature. With the release of each "version" of Pocket Antivirus the update number is set back to zero. With each new wireless update downloaded the update number is incremented by one. For example a full version number for Pocket Antivirus may be "5.4 Update #17".

Translation
So far JSJ Software has made few efforts to translate Pocket Antivirus from English to other languages, its user interface is relatively simple and doesn't have much text so it is reasonable to assume Pocket Antivirus could be easily understood by someone who does not read English.

Version 5.0 and higher of Pocket Antivirus use pictographs to indentify each function as well as text.

Version history
The current verion of Pocket Antivirus is version 6.3, So far JSJ Software has released 21 versions of Pocket Antivirus.

The first version of Pocket Antivirus was released January 3rd 2004. Later that year seven more versions of Pocket Antivirus were released by JSJ Software, including version "2.0.1" or "2.0W" which was the first to include Pocket Antivirus' wireless update functionality which has been released in every version of Pocket Antivirus after that and sets Pocket Antivirus apart from its competitors.

Pocket Antivirus 4.0 released March 1st 2005, the first release of that year changed Pocket Antivirus from a commercial program which users had to buy to use, to a shareware application with a free 30 --later shortened to 14 days-- day demo.

Later in 2005 Pocket Antivirus 5.0 was released, and soon followed by Pocket Antivirus 5.1, 5.2,5.3, and 5.4 in October of 2005. Pocket Antivirus, 5.5 was released by JSJ Software February 5th 2006.

Later in February of 2006 JSJ Software released Pocket Antivirus 5.6 and 5.7.

On March 7th 2006, Pocket Antivirus 6.0 was released, later on March 9th Pocket Antivirus 6.1 was released to correct bugs found in version 6. On March 10th Pocket Antivirus 6.2 was released, Followed by Pocket Antivirus 6.3 on April 8th and Pocket Antivirus 6.4 on May 11th.

The latest version, Pocket Antivirus 6.5 was released on May 25th 2006.

In addition to these updates, there have been wireless updates to Pocket Antivirus' virus definitions which are not considered a new version of Pocket Antivirus. Originally Pocket Antivirus' was sold for 9.95 US Dollars with the release of Pocket Antivirus 2.0 JSJ Software raised the price to 19.95 US Dollars.