FORTUNE — Earlier today I received an email from someone at Silver Lake Partners. I opened it immediately, only to be crestfallen when it was just an out-of-office reply to Term Sheet.
In other words, we’re still awaiting official word that Dell Inc. (DELL) has agreed to be taken private. There seems to be a chance that it could still come today, but the revised timeframe now stretches through Wednesday. Seems there are still some big details to work out, possibly including final price and the size of Microsoft’s (MSFT) seat at the table.
A couple quick thoughts in the meantime:
1. Multiple press reports suggest that the final price will be between $13 and $14 per share, but it’s hard to imagine too much below $14. For starters, Dell shares closed Friday at $13.63 per share (although they’re off 2.6% as of this writing). I know that bakes in the buyout report premium — prior trading levels were closer to $11 per share — but pre-announcement leaks usually create premiums on top of premiums. Plus, $13 per share wouldn’t even be a 20% premium over prior trades. Given that most everyone seems to feel Dell is trading below its earnings, Silver Lake is going to need to make an offer that doesn’t look like it’s a giant favor to Michael Dell.
2. Someone asked me over the weekend if this was just the beginning of PC-related buyouts. In short, no. For starters, this particular deal is much more about Michael Dell than it is about general private equity interest in personal computers (or in PC companies that want to transition into enterprise services companies). More importantly, what other large PC players could get taken out? Acer and Lenovo are too large, and Meg Whitman already scuttled Hewlett-Packard’s (HPQ) existing plans to spin off its PC business.
For more thoughts, check out the following video. In it, I talk Dell with CNBC anchor Andrew Ross Sorkin and Morningstar analyst Carr Lanphier:
[cnnmoney-cnbc vid=http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000145616]
