The system itself, my players felt, was decent and rich; maybe a little TOO rich. We've played other games before; games like Savage Worlds, D&D, and the FATE system. However, they just found Shadowrun's focus on minute details to be cumbersome. Maybe it's the way it's presented, but my ever-changing players didn't really want to go to the trouble of figuring out how much recoil compensation all their guns had. The player who had drones just wanted to control drones, not worry about the differences between hotsim. My hacker has played in many of my games before, and he's an experienced D&D player, but he was dumbfounded by the Technomancer rules.
The consensus around the table was that they liked many of the individual systems - like the Contacts system or choosing your housing with the safehouse system (like in the Runner's Handbook). They even liked the core combat system - rolling to hit, dodging / damage resistance, etc.
However, when combined together, all of these sub-systems ended up being too much, too fast... and I'm inclined to agree. That really ended up being the issue; when they look at the cover of SR4A, they see all this cool stuff. Once they look at their character sheet they see stat blocks for everything from their vehicles to their PDA. More than a few players (including myself) revelled in 'neckbeard' jokes.
Maybe I'll come back to the core SR4 rules, but for now, I think I'd rather start with something a little bit easier.
As for other systems, you're very right - d20 modern/future certainly could work. Has anyone ever read the Cyberpunk book? I'd like to take a look to see if I could capture some of the effects; for example, a slightly more robust hacking system than what's presented in d20 modern would be really cool.
I really loved the FATE system, so I'll look into that. One of my players has an incredible aversion to it (he's not much of a roleplayer, see) but the rest of us wouldn't mind it, I think. Thanks for the tip.
Mutants & Masterminds I've heard is good, but seems like it would be a big dent in start-up time. I'll keep it in mind.
is GURPS that good? I mean, I've played it before and it really seemed like something of a hassle. Now, I only played one session so I can't make full claim, but the game just seems very cumbersome. Your thoughts?