They are pretty damn solid in te matrix and they might be really damn good if they ever come put with some errata/faq to clarify some thing like what is a sprites logic, so we know how many dice a cracking sprite rolls to hack on the fly. The complex forms should all be about 2-4 less in drain but otherwise they are all fairly awesome, well resonance spike really needs to just go against firewall and not will+firewall. With will+firewall it is too high of a chance to miss while taking drain.
Assuming you don't take bioware for the increased logic, they are a couple dice short of deckers at standard decking but gain technomancer powers(on;ly 1 or 2 powers are worth the drain, but sprites are awesome assuming they have an effective logic stat for their skills) to compensate which IMO puts them ahead of deckers at decking until the mad money rolls in and deckers have super decks. Others seem to put no value what so ever on complex forms and sprites so they keep the decker ahead at all stages. The issue for me is making a good technomancer takes a lot more in resources than making a good decker so deckers end up really close to as good as technomancers at decking but are actually functional outside of the matrix,.
The technomancers I;ve made were either A,B attributes/skills or the reverse with C technomancer, D human, e resources. This allowed a 6 in every skill i remotely cared about, and good enough stats to get by. I prefer a attributes, as it lets you get 6,5,5,5 limits which is solid, 7.5.5.5 or 6,6,5,5 if you take exceptional attribute(which is a solid choice IMO) The technomancer in the game I run is doing fine, we don't have a decker to compare against but he is defeating the matrix opposition fairly well though his sleaze attribute is limiting him.