Didn't mean to get on this pricing quibble... as someone who modeled an H atom ab initio in solid-state physics class using Mathematica, I really like it, too. However, it is my firm belief that unless they make a free version available eventually [1], only a select few will get to play with it and use it to make new discoveries/progress.
1. Or someone makes an ad-supported web2.0 social-network version of it :~).
edit: also, the price is $140 for the student version: http://store.wolfram.com/view/app/mathforstudents/