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After a year of fighting, Dell founder Michael Dell has succeeded in taking the company private through a leveraged buyout.

Shareholders voted in favor of the buyout, which will come from Dell and private equity firm Silver Lake.

The final price is $13.75 per share and will also include a 13 cent special dividend. With current outstanding shares, the total buyout price is $24.9 billion for shareholders.

When the process began in June of last year, the price was lower, but there has been significant investor opposition, including Carl Icahn who became the company's second largest investor in order to propose a 'structured recapitalization' which would have had Icahn and another firm buy 72 percent of Dell shares and leave the remaining to trade publicly.

The argument was that the Silverlake/Dell deal locked out investors from any future turnaround the company may have.

McDonald's has begun testing a mobile payment application in Austin and Salt Lake City ahead of a possible national rollout.

After you order with the mobile app, you can pick up your food in stores, at drive-thru windows, or curbside depending on your location. Using the system will also enroll you in a loyalty program and give you offers and special promotions.

The news comes via executive notes discovered by Bloomberg. "While many competitors are publicizing their efforts to get an initial foothold in the mobile arena, no one has developed a comprehensive solution that integrates all the opportunities this technology presents," reads the notes.

McDonald's would not confirm the report, however. "We're always looking at new technologies to make the McDonald's experience better for our customers," says a spokesman. "We are testing some of these technologies in a few markets, so it's premature to speculate on the decisions we may make after the tests, but we're excited to bring a cutting-edge experience in the future to our customers."

The fast food giant has 14,000 locations in the U.S., alone.

Asus has unveiled a new transformer tablet running on the efficient Intel Bay Trail processor architecture.

The device will run on the upcoming Windows 8.1 operating system, has a 10.1-inch, 1366 x 768 IPS display, 2GB RAM and 32GB of internal storage, a good portion of which will be taken up by the operating system.

Perhaps most importantly, the device will cost just $349 for the full Windows experience and keyboard.

Connectivity options include micro-USB, micro-HDMI, and a USB 3.0 port in the dock.

"The ASUS Transformer Book T100 is the perfect transformation of the Eee PC with full compatibility, detachable touch screen, immersive entertainment and enough battery for all-day computing," added ASUS Chairman Jonney Shih. "It is truly a game-changer for our mobile lifestyle."

Google has announced this week that their Chromebook family is about to get significantly larger.

New devices based on the new Intel Haswell architecture have been unveiled, from Acer, HP, Asus and Toshiba.

Some of these notebooks will cost as low as $199, and NPD recently reported that Chromebooks currently account for 25% of the $300-and-under computer segment.

Additionally, 20 percent of school districts, and 5000 schools, have deployed the notebooks to their students.

Haswell processors have significant improvements over previous models, including 200 percent battery life in some cases. In the real world, the Chromebooks should offer at least 12 hours of battery.

Motorola Mobility has confirmed today that the company is shopping 100,000 Moto X per week from its Texas manufacturing facility.

The Moto X is the first made-in-the-US smartphone, and teardowns have found that building here in the States only adds $9 or so to costs.

Motorola CEO Dennis Woodside has said the facility is capable of producing tens of millions of phones per year, but that kind of expansion will depend on demand.

The current pace of 100,000 units per week, Woodside says, is just the first phase of a much larger plan. "When you set up to ramp a factory you need a plan, and we have shipment targets we need to make with our carrier partners, and where we need to be right now is 100,000 units and that's where we are," Woodside added.

Woodside did not break down how many of the units were models being sent to wireless carriers and how many were custom-made models built by consumers through AT&T's Moto Maker service.

Dell has revealed their latest entry into the tablet market, a Windows 8.1 device dubbed 'Venue,' following the same brand as previous devices that were discontinued last year.

The tablet will have an 8-inch screen and run on Intel's new 'Bay Trail' Atom processor.

Neil Hand, vice president at Dell, says the tablet will be marketed to both businesses and consumers, and will feature long battery life and LTE capabilities.

There was little else shared about the tablet, but a full launch will take place on October 2nd.

Intel recently showed off their latest Bay Trail chips, which feature 8 cores.

Despite the company ignoring the set-top during their latest press conference, ATD is reporting that the company will unveil an updated version of the Apple TV next week.

Additionally, the updated hardware will come with updated software, as well.

The new Apple TV will be released on September 18th, the same day as the iOS 7 operating system.

Sources claim the company will tweak the AirPlay system, "allowing people who have purchased content from Apple's iTunes store to play that stuff on other people's TVs, via its AirPlay system."

Along with their other announcements yesterday, Sony also unveiled a new micro-console, the PS Vita TV.

The tiny console, at 6.5cm x 10.5cm x 1.3cm, will compete with Android-based gaming set-tops like the Ouya.

Allowing you to play Vita games on your TV, the hardware has a slot that lets you load games from the handheld and then play it with a standard DualShock 3 or 4 PlayStation controller.

Additionally, the hardware will let you use streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu Plus and eventually will let you play your PlayStation 4 via Remote Play with DualShock 4, an impressive feature.

Finally, if you have a controller, you can play PSOne Classic and original PSP games, as well.

Virgin Media UK TV has added streaming giant Netflix to its cable offerings.

For the time being, Virgin will test Netflix for 40,000 customers who use TiVo set-top boxes, before rolling out to all 1.7 million of its TiVo customers. You will need a Netflix subscription to use the service.

Virgin will be able to search for Netflix shows on the same guide screens they use for pay-TV programs.

"It's a huge win for Netflix," said Michael Pachter, an analyst with Wedbush Securities. "Cable sees Netflix as a possible problem for them, an alternative to cable. This is an acknowledgement by Virgin that its customers want that type of service as well."

Virgin Media UK has 3.77 million customers, with 44 percent using TiVo set-tops for DVR.

"We're delighted to be bringing yet another groundbreaking service onto TV screens in millions of Virgin Media homes," Dana Strong, Virgin Media's chief operating officer.

Following the recent trend started by many retailers and Apple, Wal-Mart has started their own smartphone trade-in program.

The program will launch on September 21st at 3600 Wal-mart stores and additionally in 500 Sam's Clubs.

Steve Bratspies, EVP of general merchandise, notes that you will get anywhere between $50 to $300 in credit depending on the condition and type of phone, and as long as it is working.

To receive the credit, you must sign up for a new two-year contract with AT&T, Sprint or Verizon while at the store, or you can sign up for Wal-Mart's prepaid wireless plans.

So far, exact credit tiers have not been revealed, but a good condition iPhone 5 will get you the full $300 credit.

Apple has announced today that it will ship its 700 millionth iOS device next month.

In June, the company reported 600 million sales, so it appears that iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch sales have stayed steady.

Rival Android reached 1 billion device activations earlier this year, as the two operating systems continue to dominate the smartphone market.

Apple expects a nice sales boost this coming quarter, after releasing two new iPhones today, including a "cheaper" plastic model for the global markets.

Newly hired Intel CEO Bryan Krzanich spoke today during the company's Intel Developer Forum, telling observers that there will be tablets available "at price points below $100" during this holiday season.

The exec had previously said touchscreen laptops with new Haswell processors could fall to under $200 this year, but prices under $100 have traditionally led consumers to impulse purchases. The price point would also match those of high-end e-readers.

Of course, Krzanich would not comment on the quality or the capabilities of the cheap tablets but it could help Intel gain some more share in the market dominated by rival ARM-based processors.

Intel can support both Windows 8 and Android with their latest Atom line.

Apple has unveiled its new iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c smartphones, catering to the high-end and low cost smartphone markets.

The iPhone 5s is available in gold, silver and grey, designed with high-grade aluminium with cut chamfered edges. As widely speculated before today, the new iPhone 5s supports fingerprint authentication through Touch ID. It uses a laser cut sapphire crystal, together with the capacitive touch sensor, to take a high-resolution image of your fingerprint and intelligently analyze it to provide accurate readings from any angle. It is built right into the Home button.

All fingerprint information is encrypted and stored securely in the Secure Enclave inside the A7 chip on the iPhone 5s; it's never stored on Apple servers or backed up to iCloud

The iPhone 5s is powered by the new 64-bit A7 chip, which provides processing and graphics performance twice as fast as the A6, according to Apple. The upcoming iOS 7 comes with native 64-bit kernel, libraries, and drivers, with Xcode support and backwards compatibility.

The iPhone 5s also includes the new M7 motion coprocessor that gathers data from the accelerometer, gyroscope and compass to offload work from the A7 for improved power efficiency. The new CoreMotion APIs will let developers exploit the advantages of the M7.

Sony has unveiled a new model of their PS Vita handheld.

The new Vita PCH-2000 is 20 percent thinner and 15 percent lighter than the original model while increasing battery life by one hour on average.

Additionally, the new device will be Wi-Fi-only and be a Japanese exclusive for the time being.

The new Vita will be available in pink, black, blue, grey, lime green, and yellow color options), come with a micro-USB charger rather than Sony's proprietary port, and have 1GB internal storage. To save on costs, Sony has changed the display to an LCD rather than an OLED.

Furthermore, Sony will drop the prices of their memory cards, with the baseline 4GB card dropping to 1,554 yen ($15) and the high-end card, 64GB at 10,479 yen (about $105).

The device will sell for 19800 yen, about $190 USD.

Buried deep in a press release, Samsung has confirmed the lifetime sales of its Galaxy Note line of smartphones.

The Galaxy Note and its sequel, the Note II, have sold 38 million devices ahead of the launch of the Note III, which was introduced last week.

Samsung CEO JK Shin says he expects "10 million units will be sold" of the new Note III right on launch, which is September 25th in 149 countries.

The Galaxy Note 3 has a 5.7-inch SuperAMOLED 1080p display with 368 ppi pixel density, 151.2mm x 79.2mm x 8.3mm dimensions, a 2.3GHz quad-core Snapdragon 800 processor, (or 1.9GHz Samsung Exynos Octacore if you are in Europe), Android 4.3 with TouchWiz, a 13 megapixel rear camera, 2 megapixel front camera, 3GB RAM, 32GB internal storage, Bluetooth 4.0, WiFi 802.11ac, LTE Category 4, a 3,200 mAh battery and an LED/IR combo making the phone into a controller.