Had my Storm for a week now and still trying to get fluent - Is there a way to remove the keyboard after typing a text without pushing the blackberry menu and going to 'hide keyboard' & the 'swipe' doesn't work either - would like to just finishing typing and hit send.
try adjusting your swipe setting up to 6 in the Options > Screen/Keyboard settings. The swipe will definitely work then. Standard setting is actually pretty unresponsive.
Other thing you could do is set a convenience key to show/hide keyboard in the same settings screen.