Steer clear of Vampire$ then - most of the bad things about Armor are worse in it. Armor (and Vampire$, to a lesser extent) is one of those books that felt to me like it should be great, but just wasn't quite. It's a pity he never got to do more books, and work out the kinks.
I don't know why Vinge doesn't get more recognition though. Fire and Deepness are classics, and True Names predates Neuromancer or any of Bethke's stuff by at least 2 years (it's now online at
http://home.comcast.net/~kngjon/truename/truename.html). Can't say I cared a lot for his most recent novel though, Rainbow's End. Liked the novella when it was Fast Times at Fairmont High, but the change of plot in the transition to novel lost a lot of the charm.
I can't argue when it comes to Snow Crash and flippancy, and I know it bugs a lot of people. I love the way he shifts effortlessly from action to philosophical discussion and back again though, and the flippancy helps to stop it becoming self-important. The way he ends an action scene by dismissing action scenes as so common they're irrelevant is up there with Indiana Jones shooting the swordsman in Raiders for me.
If you like your cyberpunk dark, have you read any Michael Marshall Smith? Much of his stuff is sort of a cross between horror and cyberpunk (his short story More Tomorrow, while not strictly cyberpunk, is one of the two stories I've ever read that have creeped me out). Spares is probably the most cyberpunky of his novels. Walter Jon Williams, Hardwired and Voice of the Whirlwind? His short story Video Star, from Facets, is about as dark as cyberpunk gets. Of the more recent crew, Richard Morgan seems the grimmest, though I think he's also the one who, umm, follows the archetypes most closely.
Got any recommendations?