Costa Rica - Tips on Buying a Computer

When I visited Costa Rica in 1992, you could hardly find a computer company. And only one internet provider existed in 2005. However, today hundreds of computer related businesses exist. An extremly fast development. The governement kept import taxes for computers and equipment low. For this reason, you will not pay too much more than in your home country.

In general, costs are about the same. Only monitors, especially 17" and 21" are almost not to afford, maybe because of the high transport costs.

It is always worth to compare prices, they differ much. Good service is still hard to find. At least, people try to satisfy customers by doing fast repair or exchanging, if not possible.

You always need to buy software seperate in Costa Rica. Not even Windows comes with a complete system, what is important if you compare prices.

We could not understand, why no company in the country did know about the new combi drives for 120 Mb disk as well as regular disks. It could be a good idea, to bring a hard disk, if you leave your country to prevent to have to install everything again and probably loose datas. Of course you should have some knowledge.

Our advise: Compufax does not have the best prices anymore. New top company is an American on the other side of Compufax in Pavas, who even offers a 3 year warranty. We could not check their service yet. Compufax advertises now in La Nacion with prices where the discount is substracted already. We consider this as a new trick to confuse people.