While it’s great to stay up to date with the latest and greatest, many schools are still using old, out of date software and hardware. I look to the announcement below from Google and wonder what impact there would be if districts with 50% or greater obsolete equipment–that can only run IE 6–were using Google Sites or GoogleApps for Education.

Consider that many school districts wait a few years before upgrading an operating system, an Office suite, or anything else. For example, one district I know never updated from Windows XP to Windows Vista, and continues to run Windows XP, although buying licenses for Windows 7. Why? The equipment is too old and to upgrade would cause problems funding isn’t available to fix.

On the plus side, it’s great that GoogleApps admins were notified of the change. Here’s the email I received:

Dear Google Apps admin,​

In order to continue to improve our products and deliver more sophisticated features and performance, we are harnessing some of the latest improvements in web browser technology. This includes faster JavaScript processing and new standards like HTML5. As a result, over the course of 2010, we will be phasing out support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 ​as well as other older browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers.

We plan to begin phasing out support of these older browsers on the Google Docs suite and the Google Sites editor on March 1, 2010. After that point, certain functionality within these applications may have higher latency and may not work correctly in these older browsers. Later in 2010, we will start to phase out support for these browsers for Google Mail and Google Calendar.

Google Apps will continue to support Internet Explorer 7.0 and above, Firefox 3.0 and above, Google Chrome 4.0 and above, and Safari 3.0 and above.

Starting this week, users on these older browsers will see a message in Google Docs and the Google Sites editor explaining this change and asking them to upgrade their browser. We will also alert you again closer to March 1 to remind you of this change.

In 2009, the Google Apps team delivered more than 100 improvements to enhance your product experience. We are aiming to beat that in 2010 and continue to deliver the best and most innovative collaboration products for businesses.

Thank you for your continued support!

Sincerely,

The Google Apps team

Email preferences: You have received this mandatory email service announcement to update you about important changes to your Google Apps product or account.

As wonderful as any solution is when new, it’s important to consider how to make the transition from an old system to a new one. How does YOUR district handle that transition and, for GoogleApps for Education users, do you anticipate a problem on March 2, 2010, the day after Google begins phasing these out?

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Everything posted on Miguel Guhlin’s blogs/wikis are his personal opinion and do not necessarily represent the views of his employer(s) or its clients. Read Full Disclosure