Saturday, May 24, 2003
Virus Scanning On Your Pocket PC?
Posted by Janak Parekh in "THOUGHT" @ 09:00 PM
AirScanner just released a virus scanner for the Pocket PC: AirScanner Mobile AntiVirus Pro, and it got me thinking as to the importance of virus scanning on handhelds. I don't run a virus scanner on my Pocket PC right now, for a number of reasons:
- I am pretty conservative about what I install on my Pocket PC;
- The viruses that infect desktops cannot infect a Pocket PC, as they have a different processor and OS;
- I don't believe a widespread virus exists for the Pocket PC (note the virus scanner, in the screenshot, picked up Eicar, which is a "test" string that's triggered as a virus just to make sure the virus scanner works);
- I believe the slowdown of a realtime scanner would be substantial, and a non-realtime scanner wouldn't be all that useful.
