No laptops, phones, ipods, pagers carried on.
good security measure, and it'd work for all the short flights. you know, those less than and hour and a half. unless you're on an overnight flight, that doesn't leave you much to do on the plane, and trust me, and eight hour flight is just a touch boring without some music (and if you want to listen to the on plane music, it's cost five bucks to get the headset, 'cause your's most likely won't work unless you've got a hairband, gum, or rubber band).
i guess the solution would be to rework the entire US flight infrastructure to support short hops to airports to get cross country.
All a man's knowledge comes from his experiences