I banned laptops from my weekly staff meetings and actually caught shit for it today. I even caught a couple of people sneaking time with their Palms and iPhones.

I think there are two sides to this story.

Like one of the posters above, the fact that people are on their laptops and PDAs during a meeting means that the meeting isn't engaging them fully. That's no surprise since meetings have a very low information / time ratio per person.

I think there are two things that need to happen.

1. The person running the meeting has to help ensure that the meeting engages the minds of the people in the meeting as much as possible.

In return, the participants of the meeting have to do what they can to make the meeting productive by paying attention, shutting up when they have nothing worth saying, and saying what is worth saying as briefly as possible.

All of the other good meeting rules apply:

Don't have a meeting unless it is absolutely necessary.

Have a clear agenda and goal for the meeting.

Stick to a preset meeting duration.

Cut off and "take off line" people who can't shut up.

If someone is running a meeting according to good meeting practices, they have the right to ban laptops and pdas to ensure those who attended are engaged. They owe it to everyone else in the room.