Re: Staying current on releases?

Because IANAL I chose not to respond to any of this, but that said, I will offer my thoughts which are not substantiated by any reference, because I could not find any; except typical gibberish at irs.gov. But....

What I had thought I understood, was that the requirements regarding keeping a serial number in capital equipment are in the code of Federal Regulations that apply to manufacturers of a product that is deemed as being of significant value and [capital asset that generally is intended to be] used for some /income producing/ work by a business. Computers, engines, microscopes, cameras, et al. could qualify. I infer if the expected life of the equipment has expired or the class of the equipment into which it /upgrades/ would not /match/ the original, then it is prohibited to carry the same serial number -- But good luck finding anything explicit. Even if that is wrong, it does align quite well with accounting regulations found in many parts of the world. I do not believe it is just some scam cooked up by IBM to try to take more money. I think the available model upgrades in the time frames offered may very well match the 3-5 year life defined by capitalization accounting rules for computers, which I did find written in literally hundreds of references for capital assets when I was searching for federal regulations for capital assets at site:.gov ; at least a few hits had very clearly the /same-class/ implication as well. For example one notation stating that an engine used in mining equipment can not be upgraded to some more powerful engine outside of its current class, and keep the same serial number.

Regards, Chuck