Google Update: w/ reference to PR on Hompages!?

May2004 update effects on index.php vs index.html - Mistake or Function!?

[deaconmpg]

I maintain several sites and update has effected them in a few ways.

Google Rank for 3 of my Sites
(Google seems to treat differnt extensions with different scores)

Homepage "/" vs index.*
________________________________________
Site 1 "/"= PR 6 vs "index.html"= PR 6

Site 2 "/"= PR 5 vs "index.php"= PR 4

Site 1 "/"= PR 5 vs "index.html"= PR 5

So it seems that Google has difficulty understanding an index.php is the same as an index.html?

So My solutions that I can come up with are:
1) dump the php extension from the page if no scripts are running [or]
2) Have all my home links point to the root "/" instead of "index.php"

Thus my question to you folks is how you link to your homepage from internal pages. And/or is this a Google hickup that might get ironed out?

-Thanks, MPG