I was considering rolling a ranger, rogue or alchemist and going crazy with poisoning my weapons. Is poison effective? Is it better on melee or ranged weapons? Is it worth sacrificing full attack actions to coat a weapon in poison and launch a single attack?
I never liked poison. Too much cost for too little chance of doing much. Because it's of a "damage over time" variety AND it's super expensive to use regularly, it was always more of an NPC tactic.
If you do want to try it, alchemist is your best bet, though. You get the swift poison application. You get the Sticky Poison discovery (level 6+) to help with costs. You get the Poison Conversion discovery (level 6+) to get creative (I like the sound of "Inhaled Drow poison," has a nice ring to it) with it. And you have big alchemy bonuses to craft it faster.
If cost weren't an issue, ranged would be the superior way to use poison, and you can coat the projectiles with it before combat. Since cost is an issue, you probably want to mostly do it in melee w/ sticky poison to get the most for your money.
And no. No matter how much you focus on poison attacking, it will never be worth giving up iterative attacks to coat a weapon and do one poisoned attack. Thankfully, alchemist fairly early gets the ability to coat as a swift and get multiple uses out of the application, so you should be able to full attack with poisoned melee attacks every round if you wish.
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Pathfinder poison is much deadlier. The effects of poison are felt much sooner than 3.5, and are viable in combat. The Alchemist can also make his poison harder to resist. Grenadier Vivisectionist Alchemist will be proficient with one martial weapon, I suggest the syringe spear.
The syringe spear can effectively deliver two doses of poison in one blow.