The following charts describe Georgia State’s perimeter of support for desktop operating systems, and provide local hardware recommendations to achieve acceptable desktop performance in the average Georgia State environment.

As indicated in the charts, continually evolving technologies cause the manufacturers of desktop operating systems to establish dates for discontinuance of support. Once these dates are established, marketplace realities cause the application vendors (e.g., GroupWise, Internet Explorer, Adobe) to stop writing their software to run on the old operating system. Continuing to run operating systems past their manufacturers’ support dates can lead to time-consuming and frequently ineffective attempts to install and run newer versions of application systems. Consequently, technology support for desktop operating systems tracks the manufacturers’ no-charge support dates when determining the discontinuance of operating system support. Desktops that are currently running non-supported operating systems need to be identified and, if possible, upgraded to a supported operating system. If a desktop cannot be upgraded to the Georgia State recommended hardware standard, the recommendation is to purchase a current desktop.

Windows Desktop Operating Systems