Hi,

After a long time dithering, I've decided to buy a copy of Mathematica 9 Home Edition.  However, I'm not sure whether to go for the Windows or Macintosh version and would like to elicit some guidance to help me choose. 

I intend to mainly use Mathematica for mucking around with maths, some education for my children (age range 8 yrs to 13 yrs) and a fair bit of physics / astronomy simulation (I'm a professional systems engineer but my degree's in astrophysics and I'd like to start playing around with it before I forget everything!).

I've got a rather elderly Dell (4 GiB RAM) running Windows 7 Ultimate and equipped with a 23" monitor, and I also have a recently acquired 21" iMac mid-2011 model with 8 GiB RAM; I bought the latter primarily for my wife to use and it's my first foray into the Mac world (... well, not quite true, I used a Mac SE for a bit at work decades ago and found Hypercard quite interesting).  I'm unlikely to upgrade either machine within the next 12 months.

Are there any differences between the Win and Mac implementations that might sway me one way or the other?   Or any portability considerations that might pop up in the future (eg, I'm going to get my children (well, that's my story and I'm sticking to it) a Raspberry Pi, I occasionally steal my wife's iPad mini and I use an Android phone) ...

Thank you for your consideration. 

Hoping everyone had a good Christmas and has a Good New Year.

Stuart