[abrigham]

The start menu we see in WinMo 6.5 has nothing to do w/ HTC Sense. Even if you turn Sense completely off you would still have the new style start menu. What you need to look for is a 3rd party program, like QuickMenu, which gives you more of an old style, drop down start menu.

I've used QuickMenu in the past and it's actually quite nice.

Edit: Just re-read and I see you're looking for more of a row/column type of program list, not so much the drop-down style start menu - I don't think there's a way to get that back, as far as I know. The 6.5 style is the staggered columns style.