I'm at a tech school now so pretty much everyone has their laptop with them. It's kind of standard so I don't pay people who use theirs in class any mind. Actually...three out of four of my classes are in labs where, even if you don't bring your own laptop, you have a computer in front of you. The profs kind of just expect backchanneling (what my one Prof called surfing the net during class) and as long as they aren't in the front of the class, most don't care because they get paid anyways. They help the kids who listen, ignore the ones who don't.

I can't say anyone whispers and goofs off, though. The worst noise I had to deal with was a deaf student continually going, "Nggggggghhhhhhhhh" randomly.

As for packing things up early...eh, I do it myself. I have really bad back pain so I'm ready to get out of there at the end of class although I can't say people start packing up 5 minutes beforehand. We don't start packing up until we can tell the Prof is finishing his/her lecture. You can usually tell and when things wind down like that, people just start slipping their things in their bags which doesn't seem to bother the Profs any. Probably because we wait until they're basically done before doing it.

Wow, I babble. I...am a babbler.

EDIT: Oh, also...the first college I attended was private, too. No one used laptops in class (it was a liberal arts sort of school) and no one talked. But people did start packing things up a bit earlier.

It might also be good to note that that particular college...was not comprised of great students...kind of getting towards the bottom of the barrel there...