For those who think that technomancers are weak compared to their hacker counterparts, what do you think about allowing a TM to thread their first form w/out having to suffer a -2 penalty to all other tests?

I could be wrong on my understanding here, but technically, only sustaining the form incurs the -2 penalty, threading is a non-action. Therefore, you can thread and use it and not take the penalty since you aren't technically sustaining it and then drop it.

Um... Why are TM's WORSE than Hackers? I always found them more powerful - especially with biowires, or once they threaded some stuff up, and with a little karma. Maybe they're a bit weaker ont he front end, but later on...

if you don't design a technomancer well, and know how to do it, they will be absolutely terrible. if you design it well, and then don't play it well, it will be absolutely terrible.

if you design and play it well, they will pwn the socks off of everything else in the matrix.

Spot on.
80% of all technomancer builds are horrible and even with the good ones, 80% of everything they do is worse (or, at least, more expensive) than what a hacker could do, but at the other 20% you're an untouchable god miles off the RNG.
Technomancers aren't "worse" as in "weaker", they are "worse" as in "more boring to play, because you're always either severly over- or severly underpowered".