Make favorites always visible in Windows Explorer

Vista introduced the favorites in the navigation pane of Windows Explorer. In Windows 7 I immediately noticed that the favorites don't have a separate pane at the top anymore.

So to access the favorites (which I do a lot, I love that feature!) I always have to scroll to the top first which is quite annoying.

Is there any way to restore the old behavior? I can't believe that they went a step backwards here.

I think Microsoft has still not provided a tweak for this, as people are still ranting about it. A possible fix, if you don't require the entire expanded folders when you are in a directory, you can turn off "Expand to Current Folder". This should keep your Navigation pane smaller so it doesn't have the ability to scroll down. See Navigation -> Folder options.