All depends on what you like to fly, each ship has different strengths and styles.
Amarr ships in general require you to level up the ship class skill to reduce cap usage, but work really well once your skills are up. Amarr ships require patience but can be fun to fly. They DO have some issues at low skill levels, but it is balanced out by unlimited T1 ammo (longest range on short range weapons, excel in midrange combat, but most PVP is at short range), better passive armor resists, and more low slots for armor tanking. Recently some Amarr ships became short range, high DPS missile users (rockets and heavy assault missiles) so there is variety if lasers aren't your thing. Lasers only do EM and Thermal damage, the rockets/HAMs can switch out ammo to do any damage type. I am currently mulling over whether to train up the short range missiles for the Sacrilege, push on to Absolution and Damnation for command skills and gank, or just move up to battleship for Abaddon.
Minmater are the other race that requires a large amount of skill points to excell in, but are fast jack of all trades. None of their weapon systems (autocannons, missiles, drones, and artillery) use capaciter energy. All of their weapon systems can switch out ammo to target any resistance holes in a foe's defenses. Most of their ships are geared for hit and run sweeps and the weapons are good for alpha strikes. If you like speed tanking, this is the race for you. I fly their CovertOps and am thinking of flying their Interceptors and Interdictor someday.
Gallente tend to excell at "in your face" blasting, are the other armor tanking race, and decent with EW. They rely on hybrid guns (Thermal/Kinetic) and drones (any damage type), have a good mix of ships, and most classes of ships have bonuses for the guns and one ship that is the drone carrier. My character is Gallente and loves flying her Dominix drone carrier. I am not a fan of using up ammo, so I tend to alternate between drone and laser ships. Drones when I want a more "hands off" approach, lasers when I want to be owning my foes directly. Currently many posters think Gallente is THE PVP RACE, but the same can be said for Minmater. All ships can do well in PVP.
Caldari are the shield tanking, EW mastering, missile race. If you are in a gang, it's always nice to have a Caldari ship in the mix using EW goodness. Missiles are great for missions, but don't work very well against the fastest ships. Hybrids tend to have more DPS than missiles, but missiles require 0 cap and are not affected by turret disrupters. Caldari are considered "Eve in easy mode" but are not considered to be very good in PVP by many. They excel in long range weaponry and have the Rohk, the ultimate sniping hybrid gun battleship.
The Rohk and Cormorant destroyer get sweet optimal range bonuses to their hybrid guns, so if you like guns do not discount them.
To sum it up, Amarr excel in midrange combat, armor tanking, and now have nice short range/high DPS missile systems, but require quite a few skills to get good with lasers (missiles take less time to get good results). Minmater are hit and run types who can devote their cap to defense and propulsion, can pick their damage types, and also require a lot of skills to get good at all the weapon options available to them. Gallente tend to be short range combat masters, armor tank, have decent EW potential, and rely on hybrids and drones. Caldari tend to be long range shield tankers, masters of EW (at the expense of their shield tanking), use missiles and hybrids, and own PVE.
I fly Amarr and Gallente, but minor in the other races' systems as well.
