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PC Magazine has done a roundup of real world testing of video call applications. I did a short summary here.

Yahoo Messenger
No true "video chat" but the audio and webcam features make the overall experience feel like a true video conference. Overall a bit of a clutter with so many windows to manage.

Skype
By far the best in voice calls, the video is still a bit buggy. But its getting there. Skype is probably the easiest to set up for those techno-illiterate folk.

SightSpeed
Similar to ease of use with Skype, SightSpeed is free and easy. Performance in video seems to be slightly better than Skype because of more advanced codecs.

Windows Messenger Live 8
A heavyweight with the streaming thing, WML8 seems to have problems with real world applications in terms of lag and resiliency.

All in all, I personally think video call applications are pretty region dependent. In the Philippines, Yahoo! Messenger seems to be the predominant application for chat while Skype is mainly used for business purposes. Windows Messenger is almost unheard of. It varies from region to region.