In 1998, when this site first went live, traffic to these pages at Christmas was only around 10 percent of normal levels. Fair enough, you might think - there are better things to do with your time at Christmas than read about computers. There's playing board games, eating until you're sick, drinking until you're embarrassing and wondering if you were adopted, for starters.

Fast-forward five years to 2003. On Christmas Eve this year the traffic to this site was around 70 percent of normal. On Christmas Day it was 50 percent of normal. Over the following three days it was about 10 percent above normal.

So... a lot of you either got bored with your presents very quickly, or turned to this site as a means of escape from the usual Christmas family delights, or have been trying out your new PCs on that there Interweb.

Whatever the reasons, we're glad you're here, if only because it makes us feel better about working when we should be dozing after a healthy meal of turkey curry, sandwich à la turkey and turkey soufflé. Burp.

Anyway, best wishes to all our readers for 2004. We'll be making this site bigger and better in the new year, with many more reviews and a few handy new features to help you make the right buying decision on everything from MP3 players to enterprise servers.

Right, time for a drink. Now where did I put that glass of Vin Turkée?

Tags: christmas personal computer holiday christmas day opinions quentin tarantino santa claus literature