mbsteed wrote:Imagine a Bishopric using Surface to look at photos of members and assign them to callings or committees - a bin for possible candidates, etc. An elder's quorum presidency doing something similar with hometeaching beats...
The same thing can be done today with paper photos at massively lower cost. The elders quorum in which I serve as counselor manages home teaching assignments with a portable white board and a bunch of name labels on pieces of magnetic sign material cut to about a half inch high by two inches wide. The labels were originally printed by computer, but later incremental additions have been done with a marking pen. We enter the changes into MLS and print them out for bishop review. An alternative would be to let the bishop review the board before entering the changes into MLS.
I would expect the funds required to buy a Surface machine would be better spent digging a water well or two to keep a village from dying from thirst.
mbsteed wrote:Actually I saw a German company demoing this technology last year, so I sense this isn't a Microsoft creation but a buyout of an innovative company.
That's most likely, given the history of such things.