"Outbound Link"

Is an outbound link defined as a link to another domain name, or could it be a link anywhere, including onsite or offsite? For example, what's the difference between the two:

1.) Having a homepage, where you link to everything onsite (for example you use redirect.php?link=partner1 in order to link to link exchanges).

2.) Where you have the same homepage, except links that go offsite (for example http://www.partnerwebsite).

Does the first have a better advantage PR-wise?

Firstly, remember than in terms of Google we are talking about "PageRank".. Looking at this word (and after studying the formula) it becomes apparent that "outbound" is defined as any link to another page - regardless of whether it is on-site or off-site. Given that PR is calculated on a Page-by-Page basis - this must be true.

Redirectig links through scripts is great if you need to track them - otherwise I say do 1 of 2 things:

1. Live your life as normal and leave the links as absolute links to other sites - this makes things fairer.

2. Hide the link from Google altogether by using javascript or some other non-basic language that Google cannot translate.

Don't be too paranoid about out-bound links though... It's nice to have them!