Wolfram Desktop has built-in integration with the cloud -- it can save and load straight from your cloud files.
It also sheds a lot of the historical computer algebra baggage of Mathematica -- palettes for entering equations and so on are gone.
And although it doesn't support this yet, Wolfram Desktop will soon let you connect straight to a cloud kernel. It'll be really cool: you'll write ParallelMap, and (say) 32 kernels in the cloud will be summoned for you.
Thanks for the reply; the last feature is pretty cool. I'll certainly have a play with the free 'dabbler' edition (I forgot what it was called), but it doesn't sound like there's much to tempt me away from Mathematica for the time being. I use the CAS stuff a fair bit now.
Mathematica 10 is being released shortly, that has plenty of new things (thanks to the Wolfram Language it shares with the Programming Cloud) to tempt you! GeoGraphics, Entity, computational geometry, machine learning, Association, Dataset, SemanticImport...
I've been told I'm wrong, Mathematica 10 will have cloud integration, but with a product called Mathematica Online (see wolframcloud.com for the whole family of cloud products).
It also sheds a lot of the historical computer algebra baggage of Mathematica -- palettes for entering equations and so on are gone.
And although it doesn't support this yet, Wolfram Desktop will soon let you connect straight to a cloud kernel. It'll be really cool: you'll write ParallelMap, and (say) 32 kernels in the cloud will be summoned for you.