We heard last week that Dell was in talks to take the company off the publicly traded stock market, and now CNBC is reporting that Microsoft might invest in the company to make that happen. Microsoft may invest between $1 billion and $3 billion in Dell to help the company go private — and with Microsoft's interest in producing Windows 8 hardware, this deal might help bolster its hardware business down the line. Microsoft is apparently in talks with investment firm Silver Lake (the main sponsor behind the potential buy-out) as well as Michael Dell. This appears to be far from confirmed, with the companies just having conversations around the proposed deal at the moment. The talks are ongoing, and CNBC reports that there are hopes that the deal would be in place by the end of the week, but there are a lot of things that could change between now and the conclusion of a deal.