Submerge

I'm painfully aware.
But my character is the only technically-minded one in the group, so we need a demolitionist, a rigger, and a hacker all rolled into one TM. Skillsofts are clearly the way to go. And I can pick up Alphaware rating 4 skillsofts for .64 essence, and still fit a cerebral booster rating 3. All in all, worth the Resonace issues.

It's going to be rough to do all of them, because they need different groups of skills. Yes, the skills overlap, but only to an extent. For example, both hackers and riggers use skills from both the Electronics and Cracking group, but they emphasize different ones (hacking for hackers, hardware for riggers, etcetera). In addition, riggers need to pump points into things like Gunnery and Armorer and Pilot, unless they're going to purely count on Pilot ratings.

Add on top of that, they then continue to compete on resources. Both need a good, solid Commlink; but hackers need good, high-end programs very badly, while Riggers need autosofts and pilots and drones and weapons.

It's possible; it's just very likely you'll be either a good hacker, a good rigger, or a medicore hacker+rigger.

This character isn't starting out, we've already done a few missions so far. He's already a badass Hacker with associated skills, but without weapons or piloting capability. His only defense is his car and a few Drones. I wanted to tack on a mid-level rigger archetype to protect his ass in the valley of darkness, and stick in the ability to shoot a pistol and actually hit something.
Sure the rigger side will be weak, you can only get up to rating 4 skillsofts anyway, but that's better than what we got, which is no one with Armorer, any Pilot, Gunnery or Demolitions. The few runs we've pulled so far have certainly hit a wall or two due to the lack of these skills in the team.
I figure I can try to finagle more "right skills at the right time" bonus Karma with a skillwire set, too.

I was looking for that exact phrasing in the book, you wouldn't happen to have a page number?

I believe you'r right that it is treated equally, but i think its a reduction of both current and max rating .

Sprites are your friends. The right sprites can operate your drones or hack for you, only requiring you to be the one setting off the demolitions.

Unless, of course, you build the explosives themselves into drones, which you have your machine sprites pilot into place.

That is a damn good point. A lot of Logic and Edge (which I got) should keep glitch-related problems to a minimum, but I'd rather just risk a drone instead of my own ass.
I'm assuming that there are more autosofts out there than just the five presented in the drones section, there's obvisously a First Aid/Medicine autosoft for Autodocs and MedKits, they even mention it on page 244. I don't see why you couldn't get a demolitions autosoft, I'm going to start wearing down my GM for that exact thing.

Neko, he's playing a Technomancer.... no need for a commlink or programs. Though reducing his Resonance might affect how many complex forms he can take.

As it's mentioned by Azathfeld, increase your Tasking group and you can compile Sprites to fill some of the voids of creating a well-rounded technology expert.

I hear that one, I have a huge problem with TMs being unable to handle implants, I think the whole essence-loss/resonance-loss thing was a poor choice as a balancing factor for TMs.
At a minimum, resonance losses should be unaffected by Bioware. But ideally TMs would have a RL-level drawback based on resonance- the more resonance you have, the more powerful TM you are, but the less you get to interact with the meat world effectively. I think that's a better balancing factor that makes more sense.
The current way suggests that the less "natural" TMs are, i.e. the more implants they have, the less they are able to resonate with the Matrix. Given that both the Matrix and implants are technology based on electronic signals, I don't see why they're mutually exclusive for technomancers. Makes perfect sense for Mages, but not TMs.
The SR3 Otaku resonated with the Matrix while implants, or at least a datajack, were an integral part of the experience that seemed to fit in without question. To apply the essence-loss penalties looks like tacking on a Mage attribute.