if you don't want to bother downloading the toolbar, there are alternatives out there too. plenty of sites (http://www.checkpagerank.com/ for example, just googled it) allow you to get quick results. and then there's the keyword / backlink tracker in the dp tools.
If you don't want yet another searchbar, you can also try out the Google Pagerank Status extension, which shows the PR in your status bar. I don't know if it works in IE, but I know it works in Firefox (I'm using it currently). http://www.tapouillo.com/firefox_extension/ Cheers! Barry