I am so used to hitting the spacebar after my abbreviations, it would take me months to get away from that...

Every time I type an abbreviation I really don’t want this whole list of mess popping up at the bottom of my screen and distracting me.

You might want to take look at Texter (http://lifehacker.com/software/texter/lifehacker-code-texter-windows-238306.php). ; It's a free AutoHotKey script (compiled to an .exe, so you don't need to get AHK to use it) that puts a decent little UI configuring AHK's hotstrings.  It allows the expansion of hotstrings to be triggered with the space key and it has no little pop-up 'helpers'.

Did anyone notice that IntelliComplete has been discontinued "for lack of development resources?"

Looks like it's gone from their site - pity they didn't make it unsupported freeware, or something...