At the MVTech blog we continue to monitor the effect of our financial Armageddon on the state of our Internet use. And the latest stats that we've gathered from Hitwise indicate that this blog's focus -- computers and electronic gadgets -- may be taking the biggest hit in decreased visits (and resulting online revenue).

As we approach the 2008 holiday season, visits to retail sites are down 9.1% compared to 2007. If we break retail visits down into categories, visits to computer retailers are down 21% from the previous year.

If we look at searches containing terms such as computers, terms that center around increased performance and capacity are on the decrease, while searches for cheap, budget and low-cost laptops are increasing, indicating that we're becoming more price sensitive in our technology purchases.

The Top 5 Websites Visited from "Cheap Laptop" Searches:

1. Overstock.com
2. ComputerGeeks.com
3. LaptopCloseout.com
4. Dell.com
5. TigerDirect.com

Among the top brand's searched in conjunction with the term "cheap," are Dell, Acer, Toshiba and Apple. One of the rumors circulating in the blogosphere about Apple's upcoming product announcement expected tomorrow is that there will be a new low-cost Macbook offering. As we continue to weather tough economic times, we'll keep our eye how this effects the latest electronics offerings as well as the Internet resources that will help us stretch our gadget dollars.

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