When I looked in the cyberware section and saw the internal commlink in place of the cranial cyberdeck, my initial thought was that it was spiffy before it occured to me that I tend to replace at least one major component in my computer every two years to keep it from falling behind the curve. Now imagine that every time you want to upgrade your computer, you have to get brain surgery. Suddenly the pocket-sized commlink seemed much more appealing to me. You can throw it away if the cops get its serial number, smash it for a last-ditch logoff option, and don't need any surgeries to use it. It's easier to steal, admittedly, but somewhat less damaging to your health if stolen.

Cyberpunk handled the whole upgrade issue by having an access hatch on their neural processors; you could just pop open the lid and stick new chips in there to keep it upgraded. But that opens a whole new unappealing realm of unfriendly people easily getting at the computer connected to your brain and doing unkind things with it to make you sad.

All in all, I think it would be something of a lunatic fringe of decker to actually implant their commlinks when there's very little inconvenience to using a portable one, and no detriment in game mechanics that I could find. In the olden days of million-plus nuyen cyberdecks, keeping them in your head and very safe from theft (or better yet, in your arm and costing way less essence), seemed only a sensible precaution. But the commlinks are dirt-cheap in comparison, with rather less of a need to shove 'em in your body's rather limited free space.

oh come on, they're getting MP3 players installed along with breast implants now! Or at least they're working on it! 'Course, the maitnenace might be a bit more fun than working on someone 'headware'

It really depends on the culture, doesn't it?

In highly appearance concious places like Florida and LA, plastic surgery is the name of the game. Frag, you have people addicted to going under the knife for a little work here and a little work there.

Advance the clock 100 years and people are stopping at mall clinics to have a datajack drilled into their heads, updating or upgrading internal hardware is just a matter of course.

-Siege

hell, there might be a flap or a catch for you to pop out the commlink and service parts without surgury. You could always get a cyber hand and install one there.

its realy a question about what is software/firmware based and what is hardware based.

with the right chips the only thing that may need a hardware update is the main cpu itself. the rest are generic chips that can be rewritten using software. hell, using fpga or field programmable gate arrays one can rewrite a cpu on the go. its right now slower then a normal cpu but still, the tech is there today.

and dont forget, SR3 and before allowed the decker to burn chips at home. what if they now can reburn a chip while its in their head? want a higher system rating? reburn the cpu with it or is the system rating more in the area of the os?

because it allows you to communicate without moving your lips. that very good thing for soldiers, shadowruners, and so on.

So does a skinlinked commlink, but that has the added advantage that you have the option of dropping it (cutting the hard line) if the Black IC gets too hot for you.

thought control is standard in that a commlink is always capable of it, if you have the connection. you do need to connect it in though, be it through a datajack, trodes, or implanting it directly.

It's not *that* bad... remember, getting cybereyes implanted is outpatient surgery.

When I saw this thread title I wondered why it wasn't a poll . . .

You could have a flap on the side of your head, like Data in Star Trek used to!

i would belive that most comlinks have a kind of flight mode, like most mobile phones that moonlight as a mp3 player have. basicly it turns of the phone part while it leaves you able to listen to songs and all that. those pda phones have it to so you can still access your data without messing up the planes instruments (unlikely but why take a chance?).