I'd be surprised if there were an sme8 version of smeserver-hwinfo. I don't know of any reason that the same rpm could not work in either version.
Thanks CharlieB,
FYI I did three things ...
1. yum --enablerepo=smecontribs install lshw
(as the yum in the documentation did not work, and the above was the name resulting from
yum --disablerepo=* --enablerepo=smecontribs list available)
2. signal-event post-upgrade; signal-event reboot
3.yum info installed lshw, and got the 'Version 2.15' etc.
At a quick glance
a. it works on the command line - works VERY nicely too -which is enough for me.
b. it is not in the ServerManager Cofiguration List: is this because of the download I did not updating like the 'real one' (which was not found)
A great contribution thanks jpl
and thanks for comment CharlieB