Thatz right, me too had read somewhere on the net that Google is going to remove the option of pagerank from its toolbar and there will be no pagerank system in Google. But if you seriously think over it, then most of the people who are buying products online or dealing with some companies (online) do not neglect the fact about how good that seller stands in the range of Google pagerank. So Pagerank has still some importance over the net. And by removing this option compeletely from the system, Google will have to bear some or the other losses for sure.
it will affect your rankings if google bot gets stuck on your site while trying to load content. So how long before it gets stuck? no one knows but if you can open your pages in less than 5 seconds i wouldn't worry about that. If you can't then you should be talking to your hosting provider