I know many people, including myself, that are on dialup still (I live in the middle of nowhere, and satellite isn't an affordable option). So I'll agree that graphic intensive sites often get overlooked, and not just by busy browsers. If you have a site and are on highspeed, I'd find a friend on dialup for review of page load times.
Thanks for sharing the PDF method. Seems like a cool idea. I have heard of people outsourcing simple software programs or even just Excel spreadsheets to perform very specific tasks, and submitting them to the major download sites. It's easy to include a link or two in the interface back to your site for viral traffic, or just build your list by requiring an opt-in to download. Sorry this isn't just about link-building, but it came to mind from the PDF idea. Conquer Apathy
Yes it's kinda lame, but I get most of my backlinks the old fashion way. I email a site I think would provide me a link from within one of their sections. Sure most requests get turned down. I get 1 out of 40 requests. But I'm tweaking my letter every time to make it better and my numbers should get better. When I first started I was only getting 1 in 100.