I hate rolling stats.
The game I played at school had rolled stats - 4d6 drop reroll all ones, which is even higher powered than 5d6, drop 2. I roll 13, 8, 14, 12, 17, 9 - which is 29 points, but arrayed with some inefficiency. Our wizard had something close to 14, 15, 15, 17, 14, 12. And the sorcerer had 18 strength and 15 Con. I had placed my scores into a fairly martial array, with the physical "tank" stats coming in second only to wisdom. However, both the arcane casters were stronger and tougher than the cleric intended to be strong and tough.
Of course, I was playing a cleric, and I like to think that was playing fairly well, so it balanced out. However, what happens when the high stat character is in the hands of the most skilled player? What happens when the experienced power-gaming player rolls the high stats instead of the newer players? With point buy, a smart person can gain a bit of an advantage, but not as much as the possible wide disperity in stats rolling can produce.
Another reason to like point buy is that 18s are pretty rare.
Assuming you allow players to assign the stats they roll as they wish (the standard way), then newbies still need to know what stats do what.
I've played in an online that used an Amber-like method of character generation. The auction was only for special advantage like social positions - captain of the guard gone for 20 points, friend of the elven tribe for 70, etc. It was pretty cool, except that it seemed like it would be easy to try and out bid someone at the very end.
Alternity is like GURPS, but it uses levels to track advancement. However, characters are somewhat limited in the max ranks in a skill by level. Achievement benefits are also based off level, but you still have to buy them with points. The Achievement benefits allow the character to buy up stats and advantages, along with some other things like Extra Action, or an extra point of wound damage, however, it's usually cheaper to buy things at character creation than as an achievement benefit. Skills also have Rank Benefits. Enough ranks in Modern Ranged Weapons - Pistol, and you learn Quickdraw and Double Shot. Most rank benefits can be bought early as well. The rank benefits encourage players to get ranks in the skill, as opposed to increasing the attribute. They're also really cool. Unlike GURPS, it places stats in a seperate pool from everything else. You might get 60 points to divide between 6 stats (same as DnD, but with different names), and then get a number of skill points based off your INT. There are also classes, but they're very flexible.
HERO works pretty much the same as GURPS. However, there are more stats, and with GM approval, you might buy a Power even in a non-super game, with limitations to make the Power reflect an extraordinary level of skill rather than a super power.
A skill is usually something trained, that increases with more training. Advantages are often things like Speed Reading, Photograhpic memory, or something that reduces the cost of a group of skills. The Linguist advantage would make it cheaper to buy languages. So they're somewhat similar to feats, but most don't have as much of a combat effect, and they aren't in chains. However, some can be bought at different levels.
I use the NPC standard stats per the DMG for my players (Mwhuhahaahah)
