Yup, I liked it too. Honestly, there's never been a Star Trek I didn't like. There's been some that I've cringed through, like "Spock's Brain" but I'm a sucker for anything Trek.
The idea that it was AU made it easier to like the reboot. The rest of Trek is still alive and well in some other universe and time-line, yadda, yadda, yadda. (And as a ENT fan I always thought that an official AU would give the "Trip is not dead" argument a little more oomph (without having to rely on what the relaunch books did to solve that) since TNG wouldn't have happened the same way. That's my rationalization and I'm stickin' to it. But I digress.) I'd heard about the AU angle prior to seeing the movie so I was open to the new storyline - with the exception of the destruction of Vulcan. I wasn't expecting that and when they did it I just thought, nooooooooooooooo! IMO, that took a lot of guts to do that to this incarnation of Trek.
Like I said, I liked it, for the most part. I rolled my eyes with some of the same things folks have mentioned here about Kirk's promotion and I was a little bit confused about the Red Matter stuff. Turns out there was a comic book out before the movie that the Older Spock story draws from but since I hadn't read that beforehand, Older Spock's story seemed a little crammed in there in order to move things along - and just a touch hokey. But Kirk was classic Kirk to me, and Bones was awesome, Uhura just as sexy and exotic as she was in the classic show.
Total segway: I'd seen Quinto at a Star Trek convention just before the movie. He was on stage by himself and then on stage with Nimoy and I have to admit, Quinto himself probably did more to encourage me to like the movie than anything else. He's an awesome guest at a convention, very relaxed in front of that crowd, connects with everyone well and really came across and both Spock and Sylar brilliantly. He's fantastic with fans too. One woman went up to ask a question and admitted that she was terrified because he was such a brilliantly evil and scary character as Sylar. He jumped off the stage, gave her a hug, and then went back up there to take her question.
One guy walked up and asked if he'd say something to his girlfriend who was on the phone, and Quinto did, saying something about "Just hanging with 3,000 of his peeps." The guy was "I'm so getting laid tonight..." when he hung up.