| Trifona,
You are correct about the Spirit's pre-programmed death.
I was looking at the Spirit, and discovered in the manual that it STOPS working once the timer goes off. It cannot be reset by the end-user. This means you are buying the "licensed rights" to use the pump for four years. I hope people discover this now, or else we'll hear complaints about it in four years from unknowing victims. This may end up alienating the Accu-chek/Disetronic company (I like how they slapped the Accu-chek name on it, as it sounds better than Disetronic after the recall issue).
I don't know if you could fool the device by changing the date back a year, or if it's based on its "total in-use time" clock, which could not be altered. | 
