Which calculator is best for upper level math?

A TI-83+ is fine. Most people don't ever use all the functions on their fancy calculators even through calculus, but if you could find an ancient HP-11 I'd buy it used. They don't do the graphing stuff, but they will last you your entire career, have a wonderful feel and perhaps the best form factor of any scientific calculator ever made.

I just went back and check the feature list.... the TI-83 is more then fine for a calculator.

I am a bit curious about what people use these fancy calculators for anyway. Ninety nine percent of what I use a calculator for is multiplication, division and trig functions.

Any non-trivial statistics is much easier to do on a computer (and you don't generally do these in class anyway). As is graphing, I had a graphing calculator which I played around with... but I don't think I have ever done anything useful with this capability on a calculator.

Calculators are for basic arithmetic. Anything else should be done on computers, which are now ubiquitous.

Does anyone, even in an advanced calculus class, use anything more in a calculator that can't be found on the model I bought recently at CVS for $12.99?

((Strangely enough, as math classes get more advanced, the need to do any actual calculation gets rarer and rarer))

The ball of blubber that sits atop my shoulders.

Just to second eb, if you don't need the graphing functions to meet class requirements, the old standby TI-30xa will do the trick for $10.

well I ended up buying a TI-89 on eBay for 40 dollars. the owners manual wasn't included so I'm hoping I can download that somewhere.