Tech Forum

Stake President was wanting to buy a laptop for our meetings. What are the pluses and minuses of having a laptop for meetings? Has anyone else used one for their meetings.

Our ward has two. Mainly bought for family history. Since the videos on lds.org have been added we us the computers to help teach lessons all the time.

I have used them in meetings to review the quarterly report (with a projector) and other items in the leadership section of Lds.org. It seems in our meetings that trying to make sure everyone is following or on the right page takes a lot of extra time. This way the leader or person speaking is in charge of what everyone is looking at.

Just note that if you do that, you're on your own for all care/feeding/replacement. The church supplies nothing - no Antivirus, etc.

farwest wrote:Stake President was wanting to buy a laptop for our meetings. What are the pluses and minuses of having a laptop for meetings? Has anyone else used one for their meetings.

I suggest you check out he LUBA guidelines in Handbook 1, I'm positive you will find you can not use budget funds to purchase computers.

I bring my own iPad to every meeting and use it for church purposes when I'm there. I wouldn't have even thought about asking someone else to buy an iPad or a laptop to use for my calling. I kind of struggle with the idea of having something like that at the church that would only be used a few hours each week. Seems like a waste. And if I brought it home (to do calling-related work outside of the church building) I would find it too tempting to also use it for personal stuff.

So, on balance, this seems like something where a member would bring his own tools to use for his calling. Having said that, I can see where someone would think they can't afford one (if they don't already have one) and maybe someone thinks it would be too difficult to keep confidential church stuff secure on their own, personal laptop. But people have managed that for many years. My guess is you could find countless examples of people using their own laptops and tablets in their church callings (without a second thought about "consecrating" that usage) and very, very few using a church-provided laptop or tablet for a stake or ward calling.