Yup. But you can get a Fairlight Caliban, the top-of-the-line Commlink in the game. It only costs 8,000 nuyen, though.

I have never really seen shadowrun as something you "grind at". Many things are relevant to the gm running them, but if you were paid 50K, that was as a team, and you had alot of expenses. Even after playing my char for several years, I am still always short of cash and low on Karma. Surgury costs are terrible.

I still have never managed to land a set of hardened armor.

I agree that cyberdecks were massively overpriced, but I think that it reflected focus of your char before running life. I would have a street index of .1 on it .. so that if you wanted to buy one later, you can do so for 100K or whatever. Just bump the availability to reflect rarity. Man I miss the old days.

What you were doing is similar what SR4 did, only instead having an inflated creation time price (relative to street price), they lowerd both prices and dropped the cash available at creation time to reflect the new price.

Admittedly they dropped street price by a factor of 10 more than your lowered street cost, but remember that these are now items that nearly all characters will own in some form. So you can't used them to differentiate between a decker career path and other career paths.

P.S. Are there separate OS [off-the-shelf] options for a given commlink, or is the commlink/OS a package deal? Can you get after-market and/or home-rolled OSes for those that feel they absolutely, positively must be a slave to the bleeding edge?

Commlinks and OSes are purchased separately. There aren't any rules for home-brewed programming, although there are rules for pirating software. Perhaps further questions should be asked in the Sticky threads above, just so it's all in one thread.

Did the Commlink Customization section at the end of the Matrix chapter get cut for now? I don't have a copy of the book yet, but in my last draft (which I think is what went to layout), there were some rules related to custom upgrades and custom software programming at the very end of the Matrix chapter.

No, those rules are in there, p.240. They're basic, but they're absolutely functional.

Just, uh, it may be 2085 before your hacker finishes recoding his rating 6 OS.

Red herring. The proper comparison to draw between today's computers and SR computers is the "tabletop computer" category, the one that doesn't have MPCP. Cyberdecks are mainframes in a tiny box compared to them, and the prices are extremely reasonable for that.

~J

including the requisite Renraku, MCT, and NeoNet spies!

I'd disagree. Look at how much prices for technology now adays are falling and at the rate their falling. I'm prety sure in sr2 the fairlight is the same as the sr3 in price. And theres a 10+ year gap between and their the same price. What piece of computing technology do you know thats available out on the open market has stayed the exact same price for 10 years straight?

Mainframes. New computing tech shows up on the mainframe platform years ahead of consumer-grade boxes and servers. As a result, they can justify always charging a premium. As a mainframe (z/OS, MVS, VM, you name it) sysop, I should know.

So, in effect, Kage's right.

He can pack a lunch and a decent sized pistol in there. Rivet a loose strap from end to end and he can have a stylish purse.

All the art suggested roughly keyboard sized cases. I don't remember the offical weight listed for them, but you might as well roll dice as go by that.

EDIT: Ok, it'll be a light lunch.