I'm an old-school (1st edition) Shadowrun player looking to return to the game after a long absence, inspired in part by Steve Kenson's "Born To Run" novel. However, there's a lot of changes between 2050 and the current game year. How hard would it be to run SR4 in 2050? Would I have to rewrite a good portion of the Gear section, or is the equipment and cyberware mostly the same?

Ignore Bioware. Ignore wireless. Maybe use the same hacking rules, but just make them jacked in?

I'd also take out the smartlinks in contacts and glasses, etc.

Not sure what else...

If I read you right, you want to use SR4 rules in a 2050's consistent setting, right?
The gear isn't that big of a problem. Bioware - scrap it. All of it. If you want to start introducing some of it as SOTA tech, that's cool. Gear isn't too much of an issue. Magic isn't much of an issue. Sure, minor things have changed, but it's nothing huge.
The problem is going to be with the Hackers and Riggers. The whole wireless matrix initiative totally changed things. You're either going to have to have the WMI occur early in your setting, or write massive new rules. Personally, I don't think having the WMI occur early is so horrible, as long as you're willing to take a significant deviation from the canon timeline and metaplot.

Thanks for the help. Yeah, I'll definately have to sit down with the rules and figure out what I want to do with Decking and Rigging. Of course, if the Decker is an NPC and none of the PC's have those skills, I can just handwave Decking and ignore the need for rules...

As a side note, my first character in Shadowrun was a Decker, and the other players were a bit annoyed when half of the first session was taken up with my adventures in the Matrix, in order to get them access to a facility. Hopefully the new wireless network rules means you don't have to run the decker separate from the rest of the group.

For the most part, I think much of the conversion would be flavor text.

Gear would see some drastic changes, mostly in what is available such as bioware and some of the new miniature toys and wireless toys.

Matrix would be a big difference, but not as bad as I initially thought. Just drop resonance/otaku stuff, most of the AR stuff, and the wireless rules. Use the same system, just make everyone be jacked in.

I'll have to look closer at this as I was already kind of thinking about it anyways. I have a current group of 4 that I've been running regular D&D games with and SR4 caming out got me back into the SR mood. Since they're pretty new to the game, dialing it back to 2050 would in a lot of ways make it simpler for the new players as far as gear and such, and allow them to explore the next 20 years in shadowrun gradually by experiencing it, rather than having all 20 years of history thrown at them at once.

Edit: Starting collating information on books set in 2050. For rulebooks, the 1st Edition Core book, GM Screen, Sprawl Sites, Street Sam Catalog, Paranormal Animals of North America, Grimoire, Virtual Realities, Rigger Black Book, and Shdowbeat are circa 2050. Shadowtech on up to present day are 2052 or later.

For Sourcebooks, only the Seattle Sourcebook and the Universal Brotherhood are truly 2050 (although Seattle covers 2051 as well). The rest of the sourcebooks are 2052 or later, although you could easily use any of them, especially the Neo-Anarchists Guide to North America or Native American Nations vol 1&2 for a 2050 game.

That's where I'm starting with, although to be honest I'll use mostly 4E rules, just adjusted...I'm starting with translating gear first, mostly straightforward, but some prices may need to be extrapolated or adjusted, as 4E made quite a few changes in both lowering prices on stuff and lowering max starting money to 250,000 nuyen. Mostly I'll be using 4E pricing, with maybe a little bit higher prices for the newest cyber and weapons (ones just introduced circa 2050)
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The game I play in is set in 2063, we just make it so that wired connections are required, and that decks have a signal rating of 0. Riggers on the other hand have a regular signal rating style commlink but can only command drones or attack drone signals.

Resurrecting an old thread - has anyone tried running old Shadowrun adventures with the new rules?

I'm pretty sure there have been some threads on that subject here, and there's a Shadowrun Actual Play thread on RPG.net where the GM is talking about running Dreamchipper currently.