Many thanks to all contributors. This has developed into a very informative thread, more helpful than I had expected.
ATM, I am trialing several products. I am curious to find out what will happen with PhraseExpress after 30 days. They claim it will continue to be free for personal use, no limitations other than having to see the license reminder - probably all over the place, but I will see.
What rules out PhraseExpander - and also most of the other products geared to those professional markets = they don't have portable editions. For me that's an absolute must, one of the main reasons I need an expander in the first place. Once I get used to my abbreviations and phrases I want to carry them along wherever I go, to whatever machine I happen to be on.
@xtabber - thanks for pointing the license restriction to one computer only, I would have missed it.
I knew about TA and Lintalist, but not Auspex and Echo - many thanks to wraith808 for mentioning them.
And thanks to rjbull for InstantText - another novelty for me.
After checking it out, I am beginning to better understand the repeated mentioning of legal and medical usage:
http://www.textware.com/overview/wordabbvpage.htmNot that I need it, but this built-in smartness does make a lot of sense when I think about it.