The Laptop Dilemma

I was invigilating a first year exam today. It was in one of those lecture halls that have tightly packed seats with little pull up desks, and so we made the students leave their bags at the front of the room. We ran into problems when two students protested that they didn't want to leave their laptops at the front of the room. Eventually they did, and we promised to keep an eye on them, and nothing bad happened. But I can see this becoming an increasing problem as more and more students bring laptops to school, and I'm not sure what to do about it.