Game breaking technologies... Options

[GoblynByte]

And this will be the third and final question in my investigation in updating to SR4 (thank you all for your valuable input in all three questions).

I've gamed in several sci-fi settings and I've learned one sacred truth in all of them...information is deadly. With computer and information technology following anything close to a realistic progression it doesn't take too long for the average citizen to be able to access pretty much anything they want to know. Heck, that even exists now, but at least now you have to be sitting in front of a computer. With the new technologies introduced in SR4 you have all the world's knowledge at your fingertips.

My question is, have any of you found this to be a difficult thing to cope with? Have players been able to abuse this to an annoying level? I've been able to control such abuse in other settings in many ways, but this sort of technology seeming to be central to the Shadowrun world it would seem cruel to take it away.

Also, there are only so many times you can say "you're in a net dead-zone," or "you're batteries die for no clear reason," of "you pull your computer out of your pocket to find you accidentally sat on it." After a while you have to let them play with the toys they paid for and this can often break the flow if keeping the information from them is vital. Any GM knows the pains of not thinking of something before the players do. You can always design the adventures around not allowing information to break the flow, but, again, the players are good at thinking of what you didn't.

But in the end, does it change the sessions much? Does it change the plots? When compared to SR3 (or earlier editions) does the "new matrix" and aspects of augmented reality change things that much? How has it effected your games?