LAS VEGAS (CNN/Money) - If you want the inside scoop on what's happening at Comdex, you don't need to go to the Las Vegas Convention Center. You just need to hop in a cab.

Before the show started, Comdex organizers were estimating that the same number of people would attend this show as last year: about 125,000. Cab drivers don't believe that for one minute. One cabbie said he thought attendance was down as much as 35 percent from last year. That would work out to about 85,000 people. Other drivers thought attendance was even lower.

"Comdex is dwindling down to nothing," said Michael Frank during a trip from Circus Circus to the convention center. He thought that only 70,000 people made it to Comdex and noted that many left by Tuesday night. Frank added that the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), which will be held in Las Vegas in January, is now a much bigger event than Comdex.

Want the scoop on the state of tech? Ask a Vegas cabbie.

Las Vegas cab drivers know their stuff. Even senior tech executives find words of wisdom from them. Simon Phipps, the chief technology evangelist (yup, that's his real title) for Sun Microsystems, said that one of the most savvy observations he heard about this year's show came from a cab driver.

Phipps said the driver told him that in the past, many tech companies saved big announcements for Comdex. The show used to have an element of surprise. That wasn't the case this year.

And drivers said the attendees themselves didn't seem to be partaking in the myriad iniquities that Vegas has to offer. There weren't many lurid tales of attendees having wild parties or being out really late.

A Lincoln Town Car shuttle driver for Samsung, which had a showroom at the adjacent Las Vegas Country Club, said that for the most part work was what was on everybody's mind. "Everybody's talking business all day long. They're on their cell phones and their laptops. It's crazy," said John, who refused to give his last name unless I paid him extra. Vegas, what a town!

Froylan Diaz-Hernandez, who has been driving a cab in Vegas for the past three years, said that it was actually quiet in Las Vegas this week. The tech industry's prolonged downturn is clearly to blame for the low-key atmosphere at Comdex. And that has hurt cab drivers too. "The amount of tips has definitely gone down," Diaz-Hernandez said.

The drivers here have opinions about everything, including the market's slump. One driver bemoaned the fact that many younger investors are acting as if this is the end of the world, failing to realize that things go in cycles. "It's going to get better eventually," he says, adding that he has no money in stocks right now.

Another cabbie said he was reading a new book about Enron and was astonished to find out that one of the company's marketing officers dumped even more shares than Kenneth Lay. And when I told him where I worked, he confessed to being a Lou Dobbs fan but thought Dobbs should be harder on Enron executives.

"Tell Lou to call a spade a spade. These guys at Enron should be incarcerated. They're worse than the guys who come into your house with a mask and gun. At least the guy with the mask is honest. He tells you he's going to rob you," the cabbie said.

Viva Las Vegas.