Filed under: Cellphones

As expected, Verizon has announced today that its customers (and would-be customers) are welcome to sign up for month-to-month plans with no contract -- and thus, no early-termination fee -- involved, mimicking a move by AT&T earlier in the year. Of course, anyone taking advantage of the new plans won't be able to get in on carrier subsidies, but the trade-off is that if you decide to bolt for greener pastures, you won't be slapped with one of those nasty prorated charges. Oh, and before you give customer service a ring, take note: you'll need to fulfill the terms of your existing contract before jumping, natch.

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Filed under: Desktops

IBM and others have already boasted about their plans to develop sub-32nm processors, but it now looks like Big Blue is aiming to blow past its competitors in a pretty big way by taking things all the way down to the 22-nanometer level. That rather significant leap is apparently possible thanks to a new technique that IBM developed with Mentor Graphics and Toppan Printing dubbed Computational Scaling, which employs some new mathematical techniques and other head-scratching measures to overcome the current limitations associated with etching circuits onto processors of this scale. While it of course sees the 22nm processors being used in even smaller laptops and an array of other devices, IBM seems to be especially interested in using the chips in its cloud computing initiatives, where it seems to think the chips' greater efficiency could make a particularly big impact. As you might have guessed, however, it's not yet clear exactly when that might happen.

[Via DailyTech]

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Microsoft unveils plans to spend $40bn (£22bn) to buy its own shares - the biggest single share buy-back in history.

Microsoft unveils plans to spend $40bn (£22bn) to buy its own shares - the biggest single share buy-back in history.

Filed under: Handhelds, Laptops

Maybe it's a netbook, or maybe it's a ridiculously small notebook. Whatever it is, it's recalled. Raon Digital has issued a recall for its delightfully tiny Everun Note due to a handful of "failure symptoms" detailed on its Korean website. Best we (and Pocketables) can tell, users hearing a high-pitched fan tone, seeing a "Blue Screen phenomenon," or getting torched by an unfathomably hot CPU have a problematic unit, and even if your battery indicator is acting wonky, you too are entitled to a replacement. It's not clear whether affected users will be gifted with a new unit or if they'll receive their old machine back in tip-top condition, but either way, we'd hit the read link and do a little investigating if you own one of these puppies.

[Via Pocketables]

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