The reason for the laptops and the handheld games is that 4th edition combat is flat out boring. For every 1 minute of action, it forces the players into 5 minutes of inaction (and this is worse when CC is involved). For me, this is punishment.
Overall, I have come to feel that D&D 4th edition is the Shadowbane of tabletop rpgs from the player's side: a great idea (balanced classes, well-organized powers, no healbot or god class) with a bad implementation (skill challenge difficulty seems arbitrary and does not interact with almost any class features, the DM has to design the game with a specific ritual in mind to make it even a little useful, combats take forever to resolve with at least a 5 minute delay between turns for each player, crowd control and high miss rates make half of a given player's turns worthless).
From the DM's side it is great, don't get me wrong here. You can actually spend time writing a story of some kind without having to study a bunch of powers and spells to make sure your monsters work together properly without being either stupid or overpowered. Prep takes as long as writing an outline for a short story and maybe drawing a dungeon map.
