I was playing the WA game the other day and my sim had to go to France to hand in one of her published book and I totally forgot to bring the book with me from home so when I looked around the base camp thinking there would be a laptop there to finish it there wasn't....anyone know why this is?

Well, there certainly isn't a laptop in Egypt's base camp (it's all tents!), and the only laptops in China that I remember are the ones my sim brought from home. If you're remembering there being a laptop in France, one of your sims must have brought it!

Having never been to France before in my current saved game, I discovered that the base camp had a bookshelf that only contained one book, so I'm not sure we can rely on common sense in the furnishings .

My sims tend to wind up having the basecamp books in their inventories when they go home - perhaps the other tourists steal books too?

The one in China is the only basecamp with fully stocked bookcases. Computers are in none of the three. But nothing prevents you from entering "testingcheatsenabled true" and then shift-click "buy on this lot" to furnish all basecamps with laptop or desktop computers.
Seeing that the last patches broke the basecamp behaviour anyway (they won't get cleaned at 3.a.m. anymore and anything that's broken will stay broken, forever, unless you repair it) your Sims will have to be the hostel wardens anyway. So do your guests from foreign lands a favour and upgrade their temporary homes.

Thanks for this!

Who marked my post as funny...how is it funny?

I didn't mark it as funny but I do think it's a bit funny that you assumed there would be a computer there.

Before my sims travel I give them each a laptop and lots of skill books because it's hard (or impossible) to find those things at the destinations.

I do find it annoying that my sim couldn't use a laptop at the basecamp in Egypt even though there is a table.

Not surprising considering the China one didn't even have seperate gender lavatories :/

*EDIT: You're disagreeing vv with what? The fact that it's not surprising?
Show yourself, knave!

I use that on purpose for my sims who get urges to Upgrade 10/15/20 objects . Since there are only so many objects you can buy at home, and I tend to feel that one of the upgrades (usually Unbreakable) is worth more than the others, I don't want to be constantly changing the upgrade level of their owned objects. Instead, my sims have "nice" holidays where they repair and upgrade as many items in the base camp as they need to achieve that Want .

Try typing in "TestingCheatsEnabled_True" and shift click on the floor; choose "Buy on this lot" or something like that... I'm pretty sure that there are computers in the catalog, but I just *might* be wrong. It's always safe to try, though.

Oh okay

Thanks!

I must be doing something wrong then. Because when I send my Sim couple on vacation the only urges they get is usually to woohoo with each other and not to upgrade any appliances

Or your sims are more Romantic and less Knowledge-y than mine? :D

They have the Want to Upgrade before the holiday - I just send them on holiday as a way of achieving that. Writer geek writes books, meets random local sims, and Woohoos with his husband in the evening; Mechanical geek Upgrades plumbing, and does adventures; Husband of writer geek shops and fishes; Child of mechanical geek reads books, writes her novels, and fishes with her uncle. It works out fine for all of them! Might not be what "normal" people would want from a holiday, but they all achieve lots of LT Happiness Points!