Some questions from a new GM Options

[spookybarn]

I'm fairly new to Shadowrun, although we've been playing for a few weeks now, and I've been lurking around these forums and learning a lot. There are a couple of things I continue to struggle with, so I'm wondering if you guys can provide any insight.

For context, we're a mostly "mirrored shades" group currently in the middle of On The Run... getting on towards the end, and I'm not sure where I want to take things from there... either another module or letting them drive themselves a bit and trying to keep up. Open to suggestions there, as well, but here are my questions:

1) Hackers in Combat:
I've seen a few references and explanations here about how hacking cyberware is not really much of an option, unless you are up against the dumbest of gangers with no mind for security. If that's the case, what are good options that hackers have in combat?

2) Legwork:
My group didn't take much in the way of contacts, and none of them have ANY social skills. (One of them has an Intimidate of 1, actually, but that's it.) Legwork seems to boil down to the hacker making a few matrix search rolls with his 16 die or whatever while the rest of the party waits for the 5 minutes it takes him to figure out almost anything. Occasionally there will be things that wouldn't be accessible online, I guess... but even that seems like a stretch. I can find out almost anything on the net NOW, much less 60 years from now. Is there an elegant way to deal with this that isn't a copout? The "5 minutes of searching then new scene" formula seems like it will get stale fast, and doesn't let the other players do much.

3) Social Interaction:
As mentioned in #2, my party has ZERO social skills. We were expecting to have one more player that might work as something like a face, but he dropped out. This leads to RPing everything at the table with players that are much more persuasive than their characters ought to be. Our hacker took "uncouth" even, and ended up being the front man in what was supposed to be an etiquette challenge meeting the Triad. I ended up giving them a pass based on not having a good idea of how else they could move forward. I don't know if this is really a "problem" per se, but does kind of undermine the value of social skills and lets them get away with things they didn't spend any points on.

Thanks for any input you might have!