Thanks, … I’m getting more confident wrt this with each clarifying post.
I can see I’ll be tempted to install openSUSE-12.3 fairly soon upon receipt of the Toshiba Ultrabook (with UEFI/GPT) while I am still in Canada … but despite that likely temptation, I think I’ll endeavor to be patient and wait until I return to Europe. I plan to disable secure boot, and for the couple of weeks in which I am in North America I may just boot the Ultrabook to a liveCD (so to get my GNU/Linux fix).
Another possibility to fight of the temptation to rush into this: I’ll also have a Tablet with Android and my wife will have her Lenovo X220 (which has openSUSE-12.3 on it) - my wife has volunteered to swap her older Lenovo (with openSUSE) for my new Toshiba (with Windows8) for the 2 weeks in which we are in North America, and that reads to be a fair way for me to have openSUSE-12.3 access with her Lenovo (and she gets to play with Windows8 with my new Toshiba).