I have been fooling around with some simple one page sites. No links. No nothing, just some plain SEO. They are now PR4 and place well in the chosen words.
They are actually works in progress but are performing well, all the traffic is search engine, volume is low, conversions are high.
This proves to me that links are not necessary at all, and for these sites I will not seek any out.
For large, busy properties I will change to listing only a few front page links.