If you’ve bought enough computers over the years, chances are you’ve had at least a few of them that dropped in value so fast it made your head spin.

Before listing the worst, the best concerning resale value has always been laptops. It doesn’t matter if it’s a Lenovo, Macbook, Dell Inspiron or what-have-you. The laptop will always retain higher value than the desktop PC will. Note however that this is for standard sized laptops and not the smaller netbook format.

The worst concerning resale value however isn’t the desktop computer – although I bet you thought it was.

It’s the gaming console. And yes, that is a computer.

There’s not much that shoots down in value faster in value than gaming consoles and the games themselves that play on them.

To put this in perspective:

You buy a video game system for $250. What’s it worth in six months? About $100. If you can sell it for more, consider yourself lucky you found a sucker to buy it.

That game you bought new for $50? In six months it’s worth $15.

It is routine that gaming consoles and the games will lose 50% or greater (usually greater) of their value in six months or less.

OUCH.

Even cell phones don’t drop in value that fast.

What’s the best way to sell off a used console gaming system?

If it’s in warranty, that’s a huge, huge plus. Mention it in your listing on eBay or craigslist and mention it LOUDLY. This gives the buyer confidence that if the system busts it can at least be fixed for free.

If it’s not in warranty, well.. bundle as many games as you can and take what you can get. But don’t be surprised if what you get is less than half of what you paid for it.

When hosting PCMech Live I have been asked more than a few times if it’s possible to run Linux on the PS3. The answer is yes, you can if you use the box as a development environment. Slashdot has an article on how you can put Fedora on a PS3 box with extra tips and tricks to get the most performance out of the unit.

Originally it wasn’t easy to get *nix to work on the PS3 but now it’s much easier than it was before.

So if you have a PS3 and were looking to do something different and interesting, there’s your project – with documentation.