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Sounds like a great scope to go for - I've had my eye on that one for quite a while, having used 8" scopes for the past 18 years I fancy a bit more aperture! You'll learn a lot about the sky through star-hopping, and that will be very rewarding but ... I'd absolutely recommend getting a magnifying finder for your scope. As Robh says, zero finders are bad news for locating faint objects, or even relatively bright objects in star-poor parts of the sky. If you're in a city or suburbs, a magnifying finder is essential as there will quite often be no easy naked-eye stars near your targets.
An 8x50 finder will make locating bright objects a snap, and help lots in star-hopping to those tricky-to-locate objects. I currently have just a simple Bintel 6x30mm finder on the 8" scope, but it means that even from Melbourne skies I can see nearly all stars plotted on SkyAtlas 2000 (down to 8th mag), and can pinpoint the location of fainter objects much more easily. I'd prefer to have the light-gathering power of an 8x50 though (and would recommend that for a 12" scope).
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