when I'm hacking into a node (vr hot or cold:) my icon is in the node, does that mean that the programs loaded onto my icon are limited to the rating of the node? or do they go from the rating of my commlink?

Your icon is just "where you are." Your commlink is "who and what you are." So when you've accessed a node, your icon is in the node and visible (to any that can detect you with Analyze if you're running Stealth), but all of your programs are running on your commlink.

Incidentally, you can load your programs onto nodes to which you have access, provided that accounts at your access level are allowed to load programs. For example, my GM was sick of me cracking nodes, so he threw a Rating 7 node at me. I got in, hacked myself an admin account, and used the node to do the hacking for the remainder of the run; the node was better than my commlink. =)

...cool thanks. This clears a lot up. Seemed kind of silly that a fully decked (sorry) out hacker was so hamstrung by the node they were in. If you have rating 6 programmes and hardware, you should be able to kick butt on a rating 3 node.