Computers: Feedback: Sinned against

In your recent piece on 'free disks' with computer magazines (19 November) Nigel Willmott reported that PC Direct's December cover disk program was Smart Cat was 'guilty of the cardinal sin: mucking up the system'.

We should like to assure readers of the Independent that this is the only problem we have encountered whilst someone was using this disk and with 180,000 SmartCat disks in the marketplace we can only assume that it was in fact something else that left Windows unstable.

Our disks are rigorously checked - what we cannot check is the environment in which they are used.

Jamie Fallon

Circulation director

Ziff-Davis UK

Nigel Willmott writes: I can only report what happened, but in fairness I had tried out more than a dozen other 'free disk' programs and one of these could have upset the system.