Technically this is a registry hack...

Reordering the Start Menu icons was a high priority for me to order things in the frequency I used them.

Pressing the button associated with the 'Start' operation at the home screen would typically bring up a preset list of icons that AT&T wants you to use (video, music, shopping, etc), and those icons are sorted in alphabetical order and then any programs you install get listed in a new alphabetical order. Since I got tired of hitting Start, then hitting 'up' on the scroll wheel to jump to the bottom of the list to get to my recently-installed programs, I decided to tweak the registry to change the order of the icons.

This was a little trickier to find, and to figure out once it was found, but basically since everything in the 'start' menu is a windows shortcut, the filenames to look for all ended in ".lnk" (folders do not have the .lnk extension, obviously).

So navigating to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\icrosoft\Shell\StartMenu\ we see a key called "Order" which is a REG_MULTI_SZ (multiple-line string). Double-click on it, and you can edit it to your heart's content. My order is something like this now:

Google Maps.lnk
Opera.lnk
Yahoo! Go 2.0.lnk
GPS Test.lnk
Cellfire.lnk
Fizz Weather.lnk
i-nigma.lnk
Internet Explorer.lnk
Settings.lnk
Organizer
Applications
Calendar.lnk
Contacts.lnk
Messaging.lnk
IM & Email
Call History.lnk
My Stuff.lnk
Games
Pocket MSN.lnk
AT&T Music
Cellular Video.lnk
MEdia Net.lnk
AT&T Mall ActiveSync.lnk

The tricky thing here is that CeRegEditor won't allow you to edit multi-line strings in the program, but you can highlight everything, hit CTRL-C to copy the data, open Notepad and hit CTRL-V to paste the data, make your changes, then paste it back in over the already-highlighted text.

I've read that IT'S VERY IMPORTANT that you don't leave a blank line anywhere in the data, including at the end of the data. I don't know why, I've never tried it myself. Another thing I haven't tried but is a total guess, is that removing items from this data element will simply put them into alphabetical order with everything else *after* whatever *is* left in this registry item.

Reorganizing the Start Menu is fun, but the phone blocks you from cut-and-paste operations on some icons using the native file explorer.

To get around this, connect your phone via USB, and in the "ActiveSync" window, click on the "Explore" button. It'll open something like "Mobile Device" in a new explorer window, and one option in there (should be at the top) is called "My Windows Mobile-Based Device" -- double-click on that, and you should see the root folder of your device. From here, navigate into the \Windows folder, and into the "Start Menu" folder where you can move icons around into subfolders all you like.

A clever cheat by AT&T allowed them to create folders with an '&' symbol -- not allowed in native Windows world, even if you try to rename something. I created a new subfolder, called it "ATT Apps" and moved a LOT of items into it that I almost never use ("AT&T Mall" folder, for example).

I also navigated into the "IM & Email" folder, and moved the "IM" icon back to the root "Start Menu" folder since it was in a subfolder all by itself for no good reason. I also moved the RSS Reader and Task Manager out of the Applications folder to the root level too.