A little tactic I learned from the movie Friday applies here. You look the public right in the face, puff your chest out a bit and say "Cables!? What cables?!".

What's more likely, finding a 500 year-old treasure by chance, or being a secret family of sleeper pirates? Sleeper pirates, argh.

Reading anything backlit causes eye strain. If you don't think so, you don't read very much on the computer. This is the whole point of e-readers, they use an Etch-a-sketch style screen, which is easy on the eyes (not to mention energy efficient). Kids staring into what is effectively a bright lamp all day isn't going to make for happy optometrists, and certainly not happy students. But worst of all, backlit displays don't work well under sunlight, so studying in the park is out, or at least when it's nice outside. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_vision_syndrome