Keyboards? Voice Input? - AT&T Samsung Galaxy Note I717

Having just spent $20 on 8 different keyboards and trying various 'free' keyboards as well, Im wondering what you all find works well for the Note.
Right now, I find Better Keyboard 8.9.9 on the Amazon Market ($3) the keyboard that is working well for me, primarily because it extends the size of the 2nd and third row keys to fit the phone's width which makes the keys easier to hit. All the settings are stock except I disabled auto correct as it keeps changing my abbreviations to words I dont intend (bldg for example keeps getting changed to either bulldog or another word that is slipping my mind).
Supposedly Swiftkey has very good text prediction which might be interesting but I havent used it enough yet to know. Not yet sure the difference between the tablet version ($3) and the phone version (free) nor do I know which I should use for the Note. My assumption is the $3 version would offer more than the free version but I havent had a chance to look at it.
Of course, one of the other things about the keyboard stuff is that it requires using for a few days to determine if a keyboard is working for you.
Im also looking for a good speech to text app, it needs to be something I can select from the keyboard when it appears - ie. clicking the little microphone in the corner on whatever keyboard appears (not sure if Android lets you use a custom keyboard and change the voice recognition app from Google Voice to something else). It is important to be able to toggle the voice recognition from the keyboard as I am using some custom software on my Android phone for work that requires me to do text entry, the app does not support anything other than a keyboard meaning that I want to bring the keyboard up, tap the mic in the corner, say what I need to and have that automatically put into the field. Google Voice is ok but Im wondering if there isnt something better.

---

My favorite by far is the tablet Swype beta. Some people find the keys to be too small, but I find that it works great for me, and my fingers are fat. Also, using the spen makes it the fastest and most accurate text entry method I have used by far. It also includes speech to text through dragon dictate, which can be activated by the key on the keyboard and is very accurate, more accurate than the stock android voice recognition in my opinion. Here is a picture of the keyboard:
{
"lightbox_close": "Close",
"lightbox_next": "Next",
"lightbox_previous": "Previous",
"lightbox_error": "The requested content cannot be loaded. Please try again later.",
"lightbox_start_slideshow": "Start slideshow",
"lightbox_stop_slideshow": "Stop slideshow",
"lightbox_full_screen": "Full screen",
"lightbox_thumbnails": "Thumbnails",
"lightbox_download": "Download",
"lightbox_share": "Share",
"lightbox_zoom": "Zoom",
"lightbox_new_window": "New window",
"lightbox_toggle_sidebar": "Toggle sidebar"
}
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I717 using Tapatalk 2