death to capslock

I think you're right about why people see it as cheating, because Harry does kind of bask in the attention he's getting for doing well in Potions rather than getting away with it without people noticing too much--he even seems to actively try to be impressive with it. I think the only reason it works for him is because most of what they do is open-book (I imagine the book wouldn't be very helpful for the type of testing that goes on in other subjects, unless Harry was actually going to sit down and study it. In which case, it wouldn't be so much like cheating.)