At first glance, this seems a silly question (the obvious answer is 6) however rating 7 softs are mentioned in the books as military-black-ops-high-end-RND stuff. And since max ratings for most programs aren't specified (except for autosofts, which cap at 4 iirc) it seems you should be able to write any rating of program as long as you can score the requisite number of successes in the (optionally) limited number of rolls.

And since there are rating 7 softs floating around, how do you upgrade to a rating 7 response to run it on, since the chart for upgrades in SR4 only goes to 6 (though no maximum is expressly defined?)

.... 5th ed? Not sure. 4th Ed? War!

It's 4th ed... and what do you mean by War!?

Sorry, I'm kinda new here...

In SR4 the Cap for Software was 6 until the war-Sourcebook, which introduced Military Grade Hardware and Software with a cap of 10

So the answer is MOAR BOOKS! Gotcha. (adds another book to the shopping list)

A crappy book, to be sure. But it has military-level hacking programs and commlinks. Common Use programs remain capped at six. Technically, so do some program options, like copy protection.

A lot of the fluff and areas and whatnot were crap. I personally liked the actual milspec gear, and especially MRSI software, and the setting itself was fun.

I decidedly didn't like most of the gear rules either, for reasons that have been laid out more times than I care count by now. I did like the military Matrix soft- and hardware.

Also, what do you mean with setting? The idea of playing a big-guns military-centered campaign?

The chaos of battle. It almost felt like a few episodes of MASH where they had to play the black market to get penicillin or something by trading socks to person A for the comic book person B wanted, so then they could get what person C and so forth wanted. It's also an area where the players don't have to hold back quite so much. I play at tables where a lot of people tend to hail from D&D backrounds, so adjusting to not killing or destroying everything that opposes you is sometimes a little rough, and the ability to go somewhere that collateral damage isn't so poorly received is... relaxing.