I suppose I should wrap this up from my end, unless there are others who would like to talk about laptops. My thanks to Michelle Murrain for helping by participating. (Her last post on this thread.)
I think a church or non-profit worker would need, at minimum, OpenOffice.org office suite (from which you can also query and manage databases), Firefox browser and an email client like Thunderbird. Or perhaps Evolution, as it includes calendaring. Gnome Bible Sword 2 can give you rather antiquated Bible resources, but finding your favorites online is probably a better option.
But what keeps coming up is the lack of a bridge between these applications and ways to make them practical for clergy, church workers or other non-profit people. I was first exposed to open source software through the Labarum project which makes ready-to-print service booklets and sheets particularly for UK military chaplains. You could download their materials in a number of formats, including a file format used by StarOffice, OpenOffice.org’s parent project. In short, it was a resource that pointed to and used (what is now) open source software, rather than being a churchly project about open source software.
That’s why I’d like to write or find templates, resources, and documentation. There is still relatively little out there, especially for church work. Until then, I suppose it matters less if it is on a laptop or a desktop.