If you get Resolver, then this Resolver Spreadsheet Challenge winner shows that it is quite capable of doing 3d shaded scientific plots.
http://www.voidspace.org.uk/python/weblog/arch_d7_2009_01_17.shtml#e1049
Resolver One is a sophisticated spreadsheet built entirely in IronPython which is becoming popular with scientists and people in the financial services industry due to the power of the IronPython scripting engine within it. You can dowload a trial version of it here:
http://www.resolversystems.com/
Nevertheless, if you work with colleagues who do most of their work on unix-like systems, you might want to choose matplotlib anyhow because there is more possibility of sharing code etc. Resolver One does not yet run on Mono.
