implicit=true is a good idea.  As you say to what extent does maple have to keep looking for alternative coordinate systems.  But also to what extent do we have to keep adding commands to suite our needs (no offense intended).

However, that is a nice question Jakubi asks at the end.  If adaptive mesh is used for implicitplot3d why too isn't it automatically available for plot3d?

So it is a difficulty for the rectangular coordinate system.

So it is a difficulty for the rectangular coordinate system.

The online 3d function grapher here appears to use the Maple 12 engine

http://www.livephysics.com/tools/mathematical-tools/online-3-d-function-grapher/

hence exhibits the same results.

stranger things happen when you include the grid options or numpoints option.

That is a great point.  It was no wonder I did not know about it until Acer pointed it out. 

hm, not sure but seemed the same as this
http://www.maplesoft.com/applications/view.aspx?SID=132223&view=html

probably just that .. a test.

A welcome read. 

One graph that bugged me was this.

with(plots):
plot3d(sqrt(25-x^2-y^2),x=-6..6,y=-6..6)

Mathematica really slams Maple here

http://www.wolfram.com/mathematica/compare-mathematica/compare-mathematica-and-maple.html

Let the war begin !

Fair enough, I missed the uneval quotes. 

unassign should have separated the created data from the name and allowed gc() to clear it from memory. 

hmm.. setting the name to some smaller set of data doesn't release the memory either

temp:=Matrix(1)
gc();

kernelopts(bytesalloc)

           same large value

this would suggest maybe (I don't know I'm just speculating) that the problem lies somewhere with gc()

Fair enough, I missed the uneval quotes. 

unassign should have separated the created data from the name and allowed gc() to clear it from memory. 

hmm.. setting the name to some smaller set of data doesn't release the memory either

temp:=Matrix(1)
gc();

kernelopts(bytesalloc)

           same large value

this would suggest maybe (I don't know I'm just speculating) that the problem lies somewhere with gc()

Yes I had thought maybe it could have been unfinished code or even a bug.  But I have discovered that the problem is completely within mstring.dll

Wether it is unfinished or a bug I don't know.  If it was a simple fix it would be nice if maplesoft could simply modify the dll and make the new modified mstring.dll available.  Perhaps someone here is talented enough to fix it?  decompile the dll find the error, fix it, recompile it and make it available. 

**edit added**  I suppose I should mention how I confirmed the problem was with mstring.dll.  Transfering mstring.dll from a newer maple version into the old allows Create(ospd3) to work.  However I will not use it because there may be other unseen side effects which break other commands.

ospd3 has existed since at least M9.5 but cannot work until M15 when the mstring.dll file size jumped from 870 Kb to over 2000 Kb in size suggesting some major work was done on that dll.

Just bringing this up again as some nice applications for scrabble were added to the app center. 

Has anyone figured out why ospd3 does not work?  Is there a workaround??

Doesn't the condition n>=3 cause it to fail?

Changing n>=2 works fine.  The fact that you've set n>=3 and then using tablelook to find Zeta^n at n=2 will most certainly fail. 

zetatab := [conditional(Zeta^n::posint*x::anything+y::anything = Zeta^(n-3)*(Zeta-1)*x+y, n >= 2)]:
tab := compiletable(zetatab):
tablelook(Zeta^2+Zeta^6, tab);

tablelook(Zeta^3+Zeta^6, tab);

You don't need $1000 software to do math.  The personal Maple edition is only $249. 

Bugs in any software certainly increase frustration, but not knowing the language can also be the cause of frustration for any software.  I am certain Sage causes frustation with it's bugs, but because it is free the expectation that it will contain bugs is okay because they're expected to be there.  The fact is because you spend x$ for software one expects no bugs and when there is, it is a source of frustration for the topic you found it in.  It is unfair to say that many things do not work when in fact a more appropriate statement would be many things do work and some things have bugs.  Maple requires a higher learning curve than Sage but the question is - Is Maple perfect?  No, but neither is Sage.

I was frustrated at Sage because it couldn't factor(x^3+y^3) 
Then I found out that in Sage you you need to define y as a variable var('y') if you did not know this you would incorrectly conclude that nothing works.

Yes, there were a few commands in there that weren't completely financially related.  However , a logical choice it was to have them placed in the finance package. 

I haven't had a complete look at the Maple 16 finance package, as my native Maple platform is Maple12, but there are some fairly complex and interesting commands in there.  Even with the new statistics package there are still more commands that could be added.  It is not surprising that not all commands were included at the time.