Banning laptops just means that the speaker/presenter can’t tell quite as obviously when they’ve bored the crowd to tears. For too long, folks in meetings have been held hostage to boring, disorganized presenters who have no compunction about wasting everyone’s time. If people have an alternative, they’ll take it, and I think that’s really important feedback for a presenter.

I have seen a presenter, when confronted by folks doing email instead of engaging, ask “where did I lose you?”, and that feedback allowed the whole meeting to reengage and get back on track.