1600 column limit per table

I ran into the 1600 column upper bound in a table and I am trying to
assess if I can work around the limit or if I am in need of a re-design
of my application.  All the documentation on the site that I have seen
(CREATE TABLE and postgresql.org/about/) says that 1600 is the limit, I
looked in htup.h and found:

./src/include/access/htup.h:#define MaxHeapAttributeNumber      1600
/* 8 * 200 */

with documentation to explain the limitation.  The one ray of hope I
found was a post from 2001(!) suggesting that the maximum number of
columns can be increased 4x by increasing one's block size to 32k (
http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-admin/2001-01/msg00199.php )

One thought I had was to join two 1600 column tables but ran into the
limit of 1664 tuples.

I'm currently using 8.1.10 -- are there any easy outs(via upgrade,
configuration, or hacking postgres a little) or should I start drawing
up a different application design?

Thanks,
Mike