Thanks for all the replies guys. Here's what I've done so far:

1) Made a couple of direct application shortcuts to Gmail & OM (thanks vj950)

2) Eliminated the prompts about allowing an "untrusted" application: http://pdaphonehome.com/forums/ppc-6...tml#post656281
... about midway down the first post, he describes how to hexedit your selector.utf file. If you scroll down to post #19, there's an app which automagically mods your selector.utf so you don't need to do the hex edit yourself. This is what I did, and it worked like a charm.

3) Used a mortscript to make OM seem as if its my default internet browser when clicking links in other applications. (Thanks savedR) I used the WM5 app in this post xda-developers - View Single Post - (MY) MAJOR BREAKTHROUGH: now, you can use Opera Mini as the system-level Web browser! ... It worked great, except I had to change the first sleep command in the mortscript from 3000 to 5000 (in order to give jbed enough time to launch), and I had to change the jbed.exe command line from S0_ to S1_ (since OM is the second app on jbed's app list for me)

Man, I'm really loving OM. So far the only qualm I still have with it is that it seems impossible to extract a link (for emailing to a buddy, for example).... but I'm sure that a mortscript can be written for that too. If I find/make something, I'll post it up.

EDIT: yeah, nevermind, I'm pretty sure there's no way a mortscript can copy text out of it. but really, that only affects about 2% of what i use my web browser for... oMini rocks!