Microsoft drops support on Office 2013 for Windows Vista, XP

Microsoft have just posted some newer system requirements for their upcoming productivity suite, Office 2013. It seems that the company are cutting support for older versions of Windows, with Windows Vista and XP both not being compatible with Office 2013.

Office 2013 will only be compatible with Windows 7, 8, 2008 R2 Server and 2012 Server. In one way, I can understand that they are cutting Windows XP's support, as the OS is both old, and about to get cut from updates on Microsoft's side, but Vista? Then again, Vista reached its end-of-life milestone in April, so its not that surprising to be honest.

Not only are there stricter OS requirements, but system requirements are a bit higher, too:

• 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