Office 2013 drops Windows Vista and XP support

In Microsoft’s latest system requirements listing for its Office 2013 software there is a rather notable exclusion, a lack of Windows XP and Windows Vista operating system support.

The lack of Windows XP support does not come as a surprise to many given its age. And since Vista has been already dropped from Internet Explorer 10 support list it’s also not a surprise that the same thing is happening with Office 2013. The new Office 2013 will only be compatible with Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows Server 2008 R2/2012.

The rest of the system requirements are quite high, by Microsoft Office standards, probably due to the integration of more demanding Skype and social networking features.

• CPU: 1GHz of faster x86 or x64 processor
• RAM: 1GB for x86 or 2GB for x64
• Storage: 3GB of available space
• Operating System: Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Server 2008 R2, or Windows Server 2012
• Browser: Microsoft Internet Explorer 8, 9, or 10; Mozilla Firefox 10.x or a later version; Apple Safari 5; or Google Chrome 17.x.
• .NET version: 3.5 or higher
• Multi-touch: A touch-enabled device is required to use any multi-touch functionality. However, all features and functionality are always available by using a keyboard, mouse, or other standard or accessible input device. Note that new touch features are optimized for use with Windows 8.
• Hardware acceleration requires DirectX10-compatible graphics card

This yet the latest move by Microsoft to help phase out older operating systems so it can focus its portfolio of products around Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows server 2008/2012.

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