Microsoft says they listened to customer feedback when planning Windows 8.1. That may be so, but they also made some engineering decisions to slash features and omit unfinished apps in the preview release. If you’re currently using Windows 8, you might want to be aware of these missing pieces.
A few features that were in Windows 8 are not in Windows 8.1 at all. Here’s a partial list:
- The legacy Windows 7 Backup program, which allows you to capture an image backup of your system, is gone. The associated executable file and DLL (Sdclt.exe and Sdcpl.dll, respectively) are gone, as is the Windows Backup service. The opportunity to restore a backup created using that tool is still there, but you can’t create a new image backup of your device running the Windows 8.1 Preview.
- If you go to the System Properties dialog box, you’ll find that the Windows Experience Index is no longer displayed, and there appears to be no way to make it appear. You can still run any of the individual Windows System Assessment tests (Winsat.exe, with its many switches) and view the saved results. But there's no easy way to see the composite numbers.
- The Messaging app, which lives alongside Mail, People and Calendar in the Windows 8 unified communications suite, is not present in Windows 8.1. Its absence probably reflects Microsoft’s decision to deprecate its messaging clients in favor of Skype. But still…
