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.

Flash is one of those things on the internet that’s been a source of irritation ever since it first appeared. From the perspective of a programmer, it’s bulky and difficult to "mold" into what you want it to do. From the perspective of the user, it’s "That thing that makes me wait to load just to view it, and when it does can potentially crash my browser."

Speaking of crashing, Flash does not play favorites on which operating system it likes to crash browsers on. From time to time, something will go wrong with the plug-in and completely lock up the browser, forcing a restart of the program. Not even Linux is safe from this.

If you’re saying, "I can load any Flash page just fine", try it with multiple tabs. Chances are it’s the only type of content that will make your browser slow down and even potentially choke, even with the most powerful computer. Does that mean your computer sucks? Not in the slightest. It’s just Flash.

Flash is so absolutely hated by some that there are specific browser add-ons to block it. This is because there is no manual way (nor has there ever been) to turn Flash off without uninstalling it. I’m not kidding.

Unfortunately we are forced to use Flash for video on the internet, both for viewing and broadcasting. Every video sharing web site is chock full of it. Every broadcasting site like Stickam, BlogTV, Ustream, Livestream (formerly Mogulus) and so on are also full of Flash.

When I produce videos for PCMech, I don’t use Flash because I want to. It’s because I have to. Personally I would love to switch over to WMV or MOV format as both are far superior to Flash-based FLV. But the problem is that one is Windows specific and the other for the Mac. Mac people hate Windows Media Player. Windows people hate QuickTime. FLV is the only one that can play no matter what OS you’re using because everybody has the Flash plugin installed.

When Dave (owner of PCMech) produces videos, he also has constant arguments with the Flash video format because it’s literally a crapshoot on whether or not the encoding will work correctly. Bear in mind Dave uses Macs. I use Windows. And we both curse Flash almost every time either of us use it.

Ironically, Flash is now having the exact same problem it did years ago, but this time on smartphone devices.

The original problem was that many computers weren’t powerful enough to run the Flash plugin. Now they are, but only because our processors and memory are well along enough to handle Flash’s bloat.. even though it still locks up browsers from time to time.

Smartphone browsers on the other hand simply aren’t powerful enough to handle "full" Flash. Yes, it can handle a watered-down version, but it’s a repeat of the same problem that happened in Web 1.0 days.

Is Flash the worst thing on the internet? Yes. Slow to program, slow to load, crash-happy, incompatible with many mobile browsers.. the list goes on and on.

Since we’re all forced to use Flash to view "rich content" on the internet, how long is it going to take for Adobe to release a version that isn’t so unbelievably crappy?

My guess is not any time soon.

What’s your opinion?

Do you think Flash is the worst thing on the internet?