Re: Cheap Mathematica

Jaap Spies wrote:
Hi

Wolfram now offers a personal edition of MMA for about $300 for
download in the US and Canada. But you can't do research with it
according to the license!!

This is still more expensive compared to Sage ($0)!
http://www.sagemath.org/

Jaap






Interesting, but:

http://www.wolfram.com/products/mathematicahomeedition/qa.html

says:

Q: Is Mathematica Home Edition for anyone using Mathematica at home?

Yes. For years, people have been excited about using Mathematica to "play" or to pursue serious research outside of their commercial or academic jobs. Now Mathematica Home Edition provides an inexpensive version of Mathematica for those who want to use its powerful technology to explore their ideas. For those who want to integrate Mathematica into their teaching, research, or work, Mathematica Professional is always available.


So certainly that implies it can be used for "serious research", although obviously not of a commercial nature.

Note it is only available in the US and Canada. Also note only for Windows, OS X and Linux. There are lots of home users who use Solaris or 64-bit Windows systems. (That said, many years ago the university I worked at had a site license. This allowed academic staff to use a copy at home. When I asked Wolfram for a Solaris license to use on a Sun workstation, I was first told "A Sun is not a home computer". But after some discussions, pointing out that lots of people use Suns at home, Wolfram gave me a license for a Sun workstation. So I guess there is no harm in asking for another platform - they can only say "no")


I agree Sage is better value. But I got a bit fed up with Sage, when it was clear the developers had fixes for Solaris, but the fixes never seemed to get integrated. I was sent a list of changes needed to compile on Solaris, then each new version did not have the changes, so I had to manually make the changes. I got a bit fed up with that. Perhaps I'll revisit Sage later, when hopefully the Solaris issues get resolved.

Dave

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