I'm studying electrical engineering, and a set of complex equation is a real PITA to solve manually. I haven't really done much research on the matter, but at the community collage we are given a license for mathcad (Which basically sucks. I never get the answers right, even though the equations are right). It won't run in wine, so you have to use windows to install it as well. Luckily my girlfriend has dual boot.

Just for the fun, I thought I would try wolfram alpha to solve the equations, and it turns out that it works! That's not very surprising really, since it is based on mathematica. How could I not see this for two years?

Anyway, great success!