From the hacking example thread the hacker often has to spend time switching between loadouts when he wants to do something different. Why not just have several commlinks, each with a different loadout of programs? So, carrying two or three commlinks will allow you to have, say, one setup for dealing with all your tapped called, spoofing comm systems or whatever, one for your 'fast attack' loadout, and a general commlink that you switch things around on.

So for example: you are tapping the Johnson's phone, from this you learn that he has sent a squad of doorkickers to your hideout who should be arriving... <thump>, well, there they are. You have to spend your actions getting away, leaving your commlink loaded up with your 'phone tapping' program loadout. But now, the door-kickers are chasing you in a car, which you want to hack, and send straight into the river. Normally, you'd have to completly chage your phone tapping loadout to your fast attack loadout, then try to hack the car. But instead, you just 'switch over' to your pre-preapred fast attack commlink and lay into them.

Now that the door kickers are safely sinking into the river, you want to hack thier commlinks and see if they have any info on where the johnson might be. Seconds count here as their commlinks are busy taking on water, so you break into the commlink with your fast attack loadout, then hand your recently aquired login info over to your phone tapping loadout, and start digging around for what his commlink knows.

Seconded.

Any hacker is going to want a rating 5 (responce->system->programs) commlink for whatever serious hacking he's going to do. A rating 5 responce chip is expensive enough that you're probably not going to be carying around 10 modded commlinks.

Of course, given enough resources, its not a bad idea - but probably cost-prohibative for most runners.

A system 5, firewall 5, response 5, signal 5 commlink seem to cost around 10K. If your hacker can afford high lifestyle, he can afford a second (or third) commlink.

I get a commlink with buying lifestyle?

actually, for a high lifestyle, if you choose to leave 1200 nuyen alone to boost your starting cash, you get (4d6 + 12) * 500 nuyen...

which assuming you roll average comes out to 13,000 nuyen. gaining you 2800 nuyen in the process.

so, getting enough starting cash from your lifestyle to buy a 10k commlink isn't as hard as you seem to think. plus you get a month of high lifestyle out of the deal

What kind of action would it be to "Switch Device" when on the matrix?

Free? Simple? Complex?

One simple action per device?

It should be free sicne it is on your persona subscription list.

yes, i was presuming that you wouldn't be paying for all the programs out of chargen. crack them all and go to town

and i can't imagine why anyone would ever boost the signal on their commlink to 5 for however much it is (4 is 500 iirc, can't recall what 5 is though) when you can pay 500 to get signal 8 instead. in fact, you could just use your first commlink as a relay commlink with no penalties AFAICT.

so really, all you're looking at is the response rating cost for your extra commlinks, if you have all the programs you need at chargen. pretty cheap, when it comes down to it. half of that cost, if you have the hardware skill at a decent level and some downtime.

How do you get signal 8 for 500???

Satellite uplink dish.

Oh, lol, I'm a retard.