Audio and video chat are at the very top end of the range - you can actually see and hear users instead of just avatars, and the systems are basically a variant on videoconferencing.

But you will need a good Internet connection (in most cases, a very fast modem) and fast PC to be able to handle the large amount of data involved in audio-visual transmissions. Another drawback is that there's isn't a large number of available chat rooms. And some of the software can be a bit expensive.

NetMeeting

Or you can always try hooking up a camera and microphone to Microsoft's NetMeeting, which is included on the oceanfree.net CD-Rom, and can be used for chatting across the Net to someone also running NetMeeting. It integrates audio, data and videoconferencing into one package.