I didn't like it at first, but took the opportunity to spend time getting to know it.

IMO, it is a better way of navigating around. If I'm wanting to go a child of a folder three levels up, I just click the little arrow next to the appropriate parent, then choose the child. As opposed to up-up-up-scroll-click.

Plus, I still have the option of manually editing it, if I so choose (but that takes an extra click).

It took me forever to notice the "search" box, though. That's another really nice feature, once you get used to it.

I don't hate the bar, I hate the lack of a button to easily navigate up to the parent directory.

As a long-time user of the Up button, I completely agree.

With the new system, the parent button (i.e. "Up", as NumberFiveAlive pointed out) is always in a different location, labeled with different text. How confusing! Microsoft replaced the notion of "I want to go up" with "I want to open folder X". Great for new users, not great for me.

The new system makes a lot of sense for people who don't understand nested file-systems and just want to open Folder X... "oh look, there it is, click". Also, the old Up button doesn't make a lot of sense in the context of a hierarchy laid out horizontally, so I can see why Microsoft would want to revamp their interface.

For those of us who do understand that directories contain other directories, the option to enable the Up button again would be a welcome "new" addition to the address bar. Sometimes it's more convenient to click on a button than to reach for a hotkey.

Alt+Up Arrow takes you up one directory. Annoyingly though, Alt+Down does not descend into the currently highlighted directory, instead Enter does.

Backspace also takes you up one directory, I didn't know about Alt+Up.

Backspace takes you "Back". If you open C:\ and then click on Downloads, pressing Backspace will take you to C:\ and pressing Alt-Up will take you to C:\Users\YourUserName. Of course, if you are currently in C:\ and open the Windows folder, pressing either Alt-Up or Backspace will open C:\ again.

Actually backspace is the equivalent of pushing the back button. Which is often similar but can give different results. Boy I miss OSX sometimes :)

Classic shell will give you back your up button as well as the path name in the window title: http://classicshell.sourceforge.net/

You can pick and choose what options you want. My explorer is currently configured to be a bit of a cross between Windows 7 and XP.

Windows still uses backspace for going up a directory in file navigation right?

Clicking on the previous directory name takes you up a level. And tab completion works in the bar for going forward.