@blueblade3000,

I've found that Google Pinyin has lagged behind native Chinese IME's. Google doesn't add new words and combinations as frequently as the actual Chinese ones do. This makes it cumbersome to type in Pinyin combinations of frequently used new words.

Native Chinese Pinyin IME's are:

http://pinyin.sogou.com

http://shurufa.baidu.com

http://py.qq.com

Anyway you can install them and through usage figure out for yourself which one is most intuitive and then uninstall the ones you don't use.

If you have an Android phone though, then the Baidu and QQ IME's are indispensable because they have handwriting features which the Google IME doesn't have. Perfect for practicing writing on the go.