[zoomablemind]

It depends on what your need is. I used Maxima (wxMaxima) for a quick prototyping of handwritten formulations and as a reference for some simplifications, roots etc.

Of course, its CAS capabilities are still useful. But I find that simplifications done on paper are often more straighforward, than making some expressions transform into the expected form in Maxima. Also, it's somewhat handy to have the ability to output the formulas in TeX format.

I vaguely remember Maple being more apt at expected simplifications.

Either way, I believe that Sage, Octave, Maxima etc. should be rather supplemental to textbook-based learning. In such way their results won't appear as pure magic, but as somewhat expected outcome of analysis.