[TuriansCanDance]

I've recently become involved with a group that's running out of the 4e/20th corerule book. We have five people involved, four of which have created characters that are heavily combat centered and have little to no experience with the Matrix, baring recreational use. (Two that are essentially combat mages, a street samurai, and a weapons specialist) I took it upon myself to create a hacker/rigger, and upon urging from our GM, also spent BP points to raise my charisma enough to effectively act as the group's face.

I know, I know. Spreading my character out between three "roles" isn't the smartest idea, but I've handled it fairly well, despite having to use the maximum 200 BPs towards her attributes. The only other downside is that I had to sink in A TON of nuyen into equipment to properly outfit her for both rigging and cybercombat, leaving me little wiggle room to play around with skills.

Now, rigging was something that I got a handle on fairly quickly. Figuring out drones and autosofts was fairly simple and straight forward. My problem comes in with using the Matrix and cybercombat. (As has been the problem with 4e, I've seen) Now, I've been through The Wireless World section and all of Unwired at least three times and am still running myself around in circles.

I need someone to explain a few things to me. My elf is running a Transys Avalon commlink with a Novatech Navi OS. (Response 4, System 4, Signal 4, Firewall 3) What exactly do I need to do/spend to upgrade these stats? Because let's face it, a Firewall of 3 is meh. I know the Signal Rating is equal to that of the System rating.

I picked up the Pro User Common Use Program Suite (p.232) which gives me the Analyse 4, Browse 4, Command 2, and Edit 4 programs. Looking through the rest of the book though, it lists off other programs that can be used for Matrix actions like Exploit, Track, and Spoof. Do I need to create these with the Software skill, or are those included under the overarching Matrix programs you can buy during character creation? (p.232) Because if that's the case, I have Common Use 6, Hacking 5, Agents/IC/Pilot 4, System 5, Firewall 6. (Though I'm fairly certain that these pertain to something else.)

As you can see, I have a basic understanding, but not one that's well enough to play the character properly. If someone could give me a quick overview of what the frick I'm supposed to be doing with all of these programs, it would be greatly appreciated.

[Mantis]

OK. First for upgrading your commlink, there are 2 things to keep in mind.
First, you can only increase the hardware (Signal, Response) by 2 points above whatever the commlink starts with. You can find the rules for this on pg 222 of SR4A. The times for doing it are on pg 228 for if you want to do it yourself. Remember this also cuts the cost on pg 222 in half for these upgrades.
For the software portion of the commlink (Firewall, System) you just buy the upgrade as per the prices in the gear section. Remember that your System is limited by Response.
For all the other programs, you generally use either Computer, Data Search, E-War or Hacking to use them. The exception is Attack programs. They use Cybercombat. So if you want to use Exploit you should have Hacking skill as well. If you are playing the team hacker you really do need all those other programs and at a fairly high rating too. I would suggest you get your GM to let you use the pirated software rules from Unwired so you have enough cash to get all this stuff. Especially if you are trying to fill 3 roles on the team. They should have gotten one of the magicians to take on the face role. Jerks. 
Anyway, you can create the programs yourself if you want but the time required is stupidly long and means you need to spend time maintaining them as well so it isn't generally worth it. The rules for writing your own software are in Unwired. I wouldn't bother with it though. Just go with pirated software for all your hacking softs.
Hope this clears things up a bit.

Edit: Signal has nothing to do with System. Perhaps you meant the relationship between Response and System?