
Have to agree with you. However, I don't see it as being totally AT's fault. The hardware industry as a whole seems to have slowed down quite a bit in recent years. There hasn't really been new or innovative companies, and the ones we have now have been playing slow games of "This product is 5% faster than the last".
That, and I'm not a huge fan of the new site design. it is too "Web 2.0"y
It's not that. There's plenty of stuff. You're saying it slows down? There's plenty of motherboards coming out left and right. I know some of the enthusiasm is lost, but if you read Hard Forums and XtremeSystems, people are always talking about new RAM chips, binning, new motherboards, new cases, everything. You may be absolutely right that the crowd has gotten smaller, but it's still there to an extent and the products are still coming out.
On the other hand Anandtech may be representing the shrinking interest, but to me that's a piss poor way to downgrade your site. Keep up with it.
There are so many things AT just completely failed at which makes me think twice about using it as a main computer review site when I need things. Remember the X58 motherboard roundup? All they did was round up 3 motherboards or was it 4 at launch and then that's it. They barely covered any of the important players like the ubiquitous Gigabyte X58-UDR series or any other motherboards that came in the subsequent weeks. We all hate Toms, but even Toms did a whole review on $300+ motherboards, $200-$300 motherboards, and another on budget X58 motherboards. 3 freaking reviews. We got nothing on AT. Then there was supposed to be a DDR3 roundup and a massive i7 overclocking guide. We got nothing.
Instead Anand's shifted his focus on smartphones. But at the same time all he reviews are US phones, minus the N900. His reviews are thorough, but really only matter for US consumers, except for the iPhone 4 which is really a worldwide phone. At the same time you have giant phone sites like PhoneArena and GSMArena covering EVERY DAMN phone that comes out. Granted, they don't get their hands on all the US phones, but they review pretty much everything out there.
I know if I need hardware components reviews like CPUs, motherboards, GPUs, cooling, RAM, etc that I almost always go elsewhere. There are some good reviews left on AT like GPUs, but other than that yes, they've completely lost hte edge in that sense.
I guess I'm glad Anand still has some interesting reviews on Macs and phones that many reviewers don't completely examine thoroughly enough.