In those days also Maple had a much better display on the output fields and graphical interface. In my company we have both Maple and Mathematica. I have tried to use Mathematica but there are some problems with loading the fonts. I believe this is a problem of the installation or the platform, I got discourage and ended up with Maple again. This last is supposed to be very good at numerical computations.
Maple is a package for prototyping problems.
Fortran could be the best tool for efficiency. I came to USA from India in 1997 and I am doing my Ph.D. in chemical engineering. I tried to learn mathematica, mathcad and Maple. I have mastered Maple, but I am not impressed with mathcad or mathematica. I would always vote for Maple.