What is the best and least unobtrusive way to check for an early PR without using the Google Tool bar which I uninstalled a few days back? Would it be a plug in for Firefox or a third party site?
See http://www.prchecker.info/ or http://www.checkpagerank.com/ In any case don't invest too much energy in checking your PR as the next PageRank update is only in late July. Instead, i recommend that you write more content and develop backlinks.
i agree, just wait for it to happen. The "snapshot" - the day the update happens will be early July, but you won't see a difference until later that month when they export the data to the toolbar etc.
Use these tools: http://www.iwebtool.com/pagerank_checker? http://www.pagerank-monitor.com/ http://www.prchecker.info/check_page_rank.php Cheers!