HTC Hero strange softkeyboard behavoir

first of all, I can't stand this keyboard because it overrides all the standard android features so i have no control over the keyboard action events or buttons. But beyond that, I can't seem to make it go away! I have a screen where i have an EditText and it ends up being where the cursor is placed. On a normal android device nothing happens until you actually touch the area on the screen and then the keyboard pop's up. On this phone, the keyboard pop's up as soon as the screen is shown. I would like to hide the keyboard until the field is actually touched.

I tried putting this in my onCreate method with no luck

InputMethodManager imm = (InputMethodManager) getSystemService(Context.INPUT_METHOD_SERVICE);
imm.hideSoftInputFromWindow(myEditTextFeild.getWindowToken(), 0);

Any other advice? Sorry