The higher the PR the better, but PR doesnt mean as much to rankings are it used, they more look at content, age, quality and inbound links to determine how well a site ranks (my opinion). I think you should submit different versions of articles with different titles to the different article directories, otherwise the search engines see the same article all over...not as effective.
yeah, its so you to see, but g rank pages in fractions for him self... and it affects links of those website where is PR 3 which u see in tool bar, but g rank it as 3.9456 or 3.1868.. so link form 3.9 is more valuble for G..
Yeah google use decimals but google round up the numbers or round down (rounding rule) for the PR bars. And decimals are reused for next PR updates.
Seriously I have never seen the point in pr. Results are what matters and if you have what it takes you will see them. Uniqueness is a big factor but not all either. If content is good and not rehashed 50 times you will see results.