Dell announced its plans to back turn itself back into a private company via a leveraged buyout with help from a $2 billion loan from Microsoft, in early February. The plan, which would pay owners of the company's stock $13.65 a share, is already being challenged by two alternative buyout offers from outside parties. While Microsoft may be chipping in to help raise the $24.4 billion needed for Dell's official leveraged buyout, a new filing made late on Friday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission states that the launch of Microsoft's Windows 8 OS was part of the reason why Dell felt now is the time for its change from a public to a private business. Dell's document states that, in the company's opinion, there are a number of challenges that are facing the PC industry. They include " ... the uncertain adoption of the Windows 8 operating system and unexpected slowdowns in enterprise Windows 7 upgrades." Dell also cited a general sales decline in the worldwide desktop and laptop PC market, along with an increase in tablets and smartphone sales from consumers, which Dell believes people could buy as substitutes for new PCs.

Sure Windows 8 may not be a giant consumer success but it isn't the only reason why people aren't buy new PCs. For most people there just isn't really a need anymore. The jump from Pentium 4 to Core series was massive, the jump from C2D to the i-series was pretty big, but the jumps since then haven't really been much. I have a first gen i7 purchased 3 years ago and it runs everything I need it to run just fine. Why should I pay another $1000 to upgrade my PC when really things on it just run fine? Even for most PC gamers who want top of the line graphics an old i7 would do just fine since most new games aren't CPU dependent and an old AMD dual core gets almost the same FPS as a hexacore i7. Just buy a new GPU, throw it in and voila you're set.