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It's your class and you should do whatever you want to. But implementing and enforcing a ban is a lose/lose proposition. Don't present it as a ban. It's better to tell them you can't teach effectively with them pecking away at their little keyboards. Then stand silently and refuse to teach unless they have their laptops folded up. Psychologically, this is different than an outright ban because it places the choice on the student. They choose whether they will let you do the job that they are, in fact, paying for. Most students will appreciate the message implied by your action and comply. The compliant students will also police the miscreants who, in the first few moments, refuse to comply. Nerves of steel are critical in those first few moments because they won't be sure if you're bluffing. Don't speak or move until everyone complies. It might take a while. This technique worked great for me when I taught middle school math and the kids weren't paying attention.

It's funny that you mention this because I am writing about this in the new book I am working on.

Last month, in the Humanities Core Course, we had an incredibly passionate debate about this very subject among instructors. At one point, at least a dozen people were debating with each other on the electronic mailing list that we use for discussing pedagogy. The exchanges were really interesting and heated.

When I think about what I see happening in the lecture hall, I go back to my thesis about the way we need to update C.P. Snow on the "Two Cultures" to reflect the present conflict between the "culture of information" and the "culture of knowledge" on college campuses. Many faculty members are, like you, participant-observers who occasionally get irritated but are mostly amused by the phenomenon, and yet others respond with profound reactionary fury.