Understanding the serial number..

Question

great! i was looking at this website:
http://www.tuaw.com/2005/04/14/when-was-your-mac-born/
it says:
The first numerical character indicates the last digit of the year of production.
The next two digits indicate the week of the year it was produced.
The alphabetic prefix consists of one or two letters designating a factory code.
So, it's wrong to say:
the 3,4,5th are the keys (year and week)
it can be, the 2nd 3rd and 4th too
or not?
i have to look for the first number from left to right, correct? its the year,but can be the factory. how do I know it?
example:
V731557CMVZ
It could be from the 31th week of 2007, could be too from 15th week of 2003
its confusing =p

Answer 1

it says:
The first numerical character indicates the last digit of the year of production.
As is mentioned in the link you posted, this is for *his specific model*, a G4 Cube.
example:
V731557CMVZ
It could be from the 31th week of 2007, could be too from 15th week of 2003
No it could not be from the "31th" (sic) week of 2007.
It is from the 15st (sic ) of 2003.
The 1st numerical character is not always the year.
V7 indicates it was made in Taiwan.
If you want to know what it is without having to look it up, you need to memorize every plant code and serial number formatApple has used. They recently changed the serial number format.