So far we've used standard 4d6, drop lowest.
But for my Scarred Lands campaign, I'll try a variant of the one used in Wulf Ratbane's story hour: the players get to trade cards that give +2 to stats between them.
Basically, everyone starts at 10 (before racial modifications), and have six cards that give +2 to the respective stat. The fighter wants high Str, so he trades his Wis and/or Cha for Str cards. I have two extra sets of cards for every three players that they can also trade, but no player can have more than eight stat cards - that's a total of +16 to divide between his stats.
Then they get to pick a "bonus feat" card - one per player, and they get to trade between them. The cards have things like "+2 to Fort saves," "start with a +1 magical weapon," "start with 500xp," that kind of things.
And finally I give them a random card with a "+2 to two related skills," to add some variation to their skills.
This might seem a bit high-powered for starting characters, but they'll earn it, trust me.
I haven't tried this system at the table yet, so it'll probably be modified.