Spring Annotations - Difference between @Component and @Configuration?

Ref:-
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11903053/difference-between-component-and-configuration-in-spring-3

@Configuration is the heart of the Java-based configuration mechanism that was introduced in Spring 3. It provides an alternative to XML-based configuration.

So the 2 following snippets are identical:

<beans ...>
    <context:component-scan base-package="my.base.package"/>
    ... other configuration ...
</beans>

and:

@Configuration
@ComponentScan(basePackages = "my.base.package")
public class RootConfig {
    ... other configuration ...
}

In both cases Spring will scan in my.base.package and below for classes annotated with @Componentor one of the other annotations that are meta-annotated with @Component such as @Service.