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I, for one, endorse calculators wholeheartedly. I loved my TI-89, and I truly believe the opportunity to play around with it played a large role in my becoming a mathematician, of the sort which the "Calculators ruin math education!" brigade never acknowledges.

This was one more benefit to using an HP-48G. No proctors ever knew what one looked like, so they mostly just cared if it had a QWERTY keyboard.

Not that I ever used the symbolic manipulation, but the equation library was insanely handy from time to time.

When I was in high school and college, they typically only banned calculators that had full keyboards (e.g. TI-92). I believe I was allowed to use a TI-89 on both the SATs and the GREs.