For my 9-5 work, I usually need to open up a dozen of programs/windows, and my Windows taskbar quickly become crowded and un-useable. To save the precious screen space in the taskbar, i opt to hide away the system tray clock and the Start Button altogether. That gives me an extra 2 inches in the Taskbar, making it that much better, I am a freak!

To hide away the Windows XP Start Button, I use Start Killer.  Once installed, right-click on the Systray icon (or press CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+F12) to bring up the settings dialog. Make sure that the ‘Load on system startup’ is checked so that the Start Button will be hidden always.

After the Start Button is hidden, you can still bring it up by pressing the Win key, or Ctrl-Esc key as per normal.

Instead of hiding it altogether, you may opt to make it shorter by taking away or changing the ‘Start’ caption. You can choose to change it, for e.g. to ‘Go’. There are many utilities online for you to do that, but those quick solutions are not too elegant, because they only change the caption but doesn’t shorten the length of the Start Button. To really change the caption and shorten the button, you will need to do some registry hacking. Feeling adventurous ? Head over here, or this video tutorial. Thinking of changing the Windows logo in the Start Button as well ? Head over here for another video tutorial.