www.skype.com . It's a voice chat program. Up here, the BEST long distance plan I can get effectively means still paying 40cents a minute to call my wife, and more for friends. It's telephone quality, easy as heck to set up, and easier to use.
I've almost replaced my phone with it, to be honest.
And on MSN, if you clicky the little arrow under the cam pic, you can get it a good size. I find it still streams WAY better than Yahoo, which gives poor FPS even on supermode.