Whats changed about explorer that makes it worse? I always thought it was pretty skanky but I can't really see any difference from XP, you can turn the menu bar and status bar back on if you want.
The only thing that annoys me is the lack of an "up" button to go to the directory above the one you're in.
Actually the "up" button it the one feature I don't miss much. The breadcrumb navigation is one of the few better ideas in the explorer.
Yes, you can enable the "upper" menu again. Granted, not really needed. The other menu bar is quite rudimentary, not customizable (probably because it auto-adapts to different places) and misses a few options.
The new status bar is a step back. The one you can turn on is indeed superfluous and it makes no sense whatsoever that it's still there. Perhaps backwards compatibility (*shrugs*) The new one takes too much space for less information. Especially the remaining free space is sorely missed. BTW, the icon is misleading when you have multiple different files (filetypes) selected.
Biggest bummer: By default the explorer no longer remembers view and order of individual folders. From what I have read I suspect it's a bug, but you can never be sure with MS. Took me some searching and registry tweaks to get this working for the most part. I still have certain windows (e.g. open/save) which insist on a certain view. (Need more research there; I suspect this has to do with "Optimize for" property of folders - another not entirely successful idea).
Under certain circumstances the right side window can show you a different folder than the one selected on the right side. Which can lead to nasty surprises.
There are smaller issues which might simply be a matter of taste, like the way files sometimes get added at the end of a folder and sometimes immediately get sorted in the selected order (annoying when unzipping files which then "disappear" in a crowd of files.
In general it feels slower and less responsive.
Also the right side tree has become quite crowded. Have a lot of favourites and libraries and the tree can be quite long, requiring a lot of scrolling. Other file managers has solved this more elegantly.
Also the UI no longer remembers position and window sizes of applications (at least in some cases).
I hope SP1 corrects some of those issues (well, a man might dream, right?)
Having said all that it's only fair to point out that there are a few improvements. The idea of the libraries is neat (though so far I don't need them as much as they might deserve), the adaptable menubar would be nice if it was customizable, the search function is an (overdue) nice idea. I've mentioned breadcrumb navigation already.