Oh yes, i understand. One tool rarely does it all. I always
   wanted a copy of Mathmatica, so I'm a tad bit envious.

   I remember the kids who were doing higher math in 1990/1991
   using Mathematica and it seemed like SUCH a powerful program
   compared to anything else I saw before.

   I worked in the computer lab, and I had to help tweak the
   computers so the kids (I say kids - they were "older" to me then
   - 19, 20, 21) and professors that used it could use it at its
   maximum efficiency.

   But I was taking child psychology, pascal programming, and other
   courses having little to do with mathematics.

   But I'd see them with their fancy formulas and think, "Man, I
   should be using the sink, not improving the plumbing".

   Man, 25 years ago. Yow. I don't even know when Mathmatica came
   out honestly. It must be ancient - I don't *think* Excel even
   existed back then. It was Lotus 1 2 3 and.. hm.. Quattro Pro.
   Wait - the Macs had Excel. Yeah, I played with it on the Macs.

   Had other friends doing AI, but I DID get to play around with
   Fractals. My downloaded copy of Fractint was worn out; I'd beat
   up my poor computer trying to make it do more and more difficult
   fractals, probably my frustrated response to the students that
   understand the higher math scribbles that I didn't.

   But I got to make prettier pictures and see recursive math in
   beautiful 16 and then 256 color when THEY were graphing in
   boring black and white. So, I had some vindication tongue
   emoticon

   I was also able to write a Turbo Pascal program to graph my
   friend's neural network, complete with all the weightings in 16
   colors, and got it printed on one of the few Bubblejet printers
   that were available.

   He told me he amazed the professor, so he took me to lunch as a
   thank you.