I'm putting my money on Google Pinyin. The installation process will NOT be in english, but it's the best one out there i reckon.

NJStar is decent or you can just install the language pack on your computer

Microsoft and Google IME are both incredible.

I would recommend "万能输入法", you can get it at this website. http://www.wnwb.com. With that input software, you can type English to get Chinese characters. it's very convenient for english users. Hope this helps.

There are many programs. The easy way is that you can type 'pin yin shu ru fa' in textbox while you access http://www.google.com or http://www.baidu.com Then, the lists are below. :)