As others have said, the pure magic adept will come out sub part to the augmented character almost every time. That isn't to say they are not playable, but they are sub-optimal.
The most mechanically effective adepts are ones what start with a high magic but loose a point or two of essence to bioware. Raising your agility and strength through bioware is vastly more efficient than paying for it through adept powers.
Adepts tend to be hyper specialists. Pick one thing and get incredibly good at it. Unarmed combat is a good example. A adept with a bit of bioware can be throwing high teen dice pools for unarmed, hitting for both killing and electrical damage when they wish to, and can do things like punch spirits in the face to good effect. Blade adepts have the advantage of using weapon focuses. When you build an adept go all in. If you are a pistol adept, you want to soft cap your agility, get a restricted gear quality, buy muscle tone 4, buy pistols 6, use an adept power to increase your skill to pistols (9), throw in a specialization, and then get really, really good guns. With a smartgun link on some goggles thats 9+9+2+2=22 dice with your specialized pistols at char gen. Bang freaking bang.
I will admit, you may not have alot else to do when you can't play gunslinger. But thats the nature of adepts. Hyper specialize.
