Wisdom of using Sympy as a first CAS I'm an undergrad. maths student and have been looking at a few different free maths programs (mainly CAS systems, I've been very impressed with Octave as a MATLAB clone.) I've been tossing up between learning to use Maxima (the logical, stable, powerful, widespread option) and Sympy (the newer, less comprehensive option but which is written in Python (which for me is a big plus :) )). My question is: if anyone out there has any experience with Sympy or Maxima, what would you recomend? Is sympy comprehensive/powerful enough to handle most of the undergraduate maths that Maxima can? Would it be wiser/more beneficial in the long run if I taught myself how to use the more widespread maxima? And ofcourse, does anyone else have any other recomended CAS systems? 
Thanks
BTW, I'm afraid, to my eternal shame, I'm pretty much a Windows-only user, in case there are any SAGE-evangelists out there :D
 A: I recommand this online CAS calculator:
http://www.vroomlab.com/nhome
click on calculator image to access. No download/install!
it does algebra, trig, matrix, calculus. it is also a gaphing calculator.
this calculator is maxima based but can also use maple and mathematica as its CAS engine.
have fun!
A: (I am the lead developer of SymPy)
I would recommend SymPy because it is in Python, which you will find is indeed a real plus.  Also, in the past few years it's grown to be a very powerful computer algebra system, with some very fast, powerful, and nontrivial algorithms implemented.  Also, in my experience, Maxima is slow (slower than both SymPy and most other alternatives as well).
Also, we have a great community if you need help :)
A: As you're a math student, try SAGE, "http://www.sagemath.org/". It is free and very powerful and open source. Please note that it is more convenient (and programs runs faster) using SAGE in Linux rather than in windows (using VirtualBox or something like that).
