Madm3n,
You cannot currently disable the row count displayed next to the column value that is being used for grouping. Several BETA testers had mentioned this as annoying as well, we were just trying to stick with the standard SharePoint look. We have added this item to the development roadmap for our next release...it will become an option to enable/disable.
As far as the missing items in the ToolPart property editor, this is expected behavior. Assuming of course the web part is behaving correctly in your case. When the web part is connected to a valid Provider and is receiving 1 or more rows of information from the Provider it will only display ToolPart options for those Content Types that it found in the filter data supplied by the Provider. Regardless of whether the provider is our What's New List Filter Provider or not. So in your case I would expect that the Include Expired Announcements ToolPart option would be disabled if the currently defined filter does NOT contain any Lists of the Content Type Announcements.
If you would please verify that the current filter does in fact contain at least 1 List of type Announcements. I also expect that the Content Type Announcements under the ToolPart category Content Types is also missing in your case.