Why don't you give Snapkeys a try, its very simple to learn and frees up my whole screen. Predicts my word every time. I can't go back to qwerty now.

I've used Swype enough to get good at it, but I never found it all that much better. Different, and not worse, but not all that much better, except for one hand typing in portrait mode. Some people love it though. I checked out the beta of Snapkeys, and I found that intriguing. It really depends on the accuracy of its predictive text to work, and I could see it being a very fast way to type as the "predictions" get better. Which brings me to a popular choice that you didn't mention, Swiftkeys, which is also focused on predictive text. Some people hate it, some people love it. Like the other poster said, there are a lot of options out there. It comes down to personal preference. I actually like the stock Gingerbread keyboard best of all the keyboards I've tried, but that's probably because I used it longer than any other and got used to it.