The importance of PageRank

PageRank use to be the part of SEO that everyone was gunning for a few years ago, yet since Google starting making major changes to how PR was worked out, it is now questionable whether it has any value at all.
The simple equation was that the more back-links you had, the better your PageRank - a simple indicator of 'off-page' optimisation with some jiggery-pokerty thrown in to come up with a hierarchical structure. However a few years on and I have the following niggling doubts:

• Do I need PR to get a search-engine result? - the answer is a resounding NO - I even have a site that ranks anything from 1 to 3 for a very specific keyword - it has never had any PR...
• Is Google actually taking any notice of PR - the current thinking is that Google has already, or is condsidering... dumping PR altogether - and even though PR is still visible in the Google toolbar, it's actual value is probably questionable at least...
• Why do people think PR is still important? - I can't really answer that, but it seems to me that certain die-hards are still taking notice of soemthing that could already be defunct, and are even still paying to try and get their PR boosted.
• Does this mean that there is no point linking? No, I do believe that organic links from like-minded sites will somehow figure in getting you search position because that just makes sense. Also I cannot see how Google can legitimately penalise someone for a paid link from a relavent site when Google itself runs paid ads in the form of Adsense which could be hosted on the same site....

My conclusions for those interested in SEO - Just keep doing what seems right, try for free links from sites within your niche, get your 'on-page' optimisation sorted and keep uddating your site with good content - I believe that makes sense and therefore eventually SERP should reflect your good hard work.