1) I noticed that when I created a new PHP Page (file>new>PHP file)the code page that was created lacked the closing ?> markup.  Is that normal?

Yep, not closing a file with ?> is actually recommended.

2) Code assist only works when I press CTL-space. I followed the help instructions, and verified that window>preferences>PHP>editor>Code Assist had the Enable auto activation box was checked.  Actually, I still had Ganymede files installed, so I fired it up, and it has the same behavior, although it did add the closing ?> that I mentioned in #!.

You are right that autocompletion is a bit Spartan.
In comparison to Visual Studio you need to hit the keyboard very often to trigger autocompletion. Eclipse/pdt does litte to follow you with advise.

You can see in window>preferences>PHP>editor>Code Assist that there are autocompletion trigger characters. Only when you enter these characters, autocompletion pops up. Code assist will also be there if you type "new "


Code assist is thus very limited. To improve this situation I would suggest heading over to this bug report and add your vote: https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=204768