When I got my iPad I cleaned up my phone so I only had 3 homescreens. So I've now gotten it down to 1 using folders.
I put all the stock icons except for the high use ones ie. phone, Safari, Settings in a folder called "Apple" then I put all my other apps into appropriate folders
Productivity- All my most used and organizational apps
Notes- All my text editing related apps
Language Tools- All my language lesson apps
Twitter- All my twitter related apps
Games- All my gaming apps
Mobile Me Tools- All Mobile Me associated apps
Information- All my information type apps ie. Wikipanion, yellowpages, etc.
the loose apps are the ones that didn't fit into a category or I would only have 1 icon in a folder which is pretty pointless and ugly.