If you're likely to install it onto 2 machines, I'd suggest buying the distro.
Like you said, it's not a lot of money, and you'd be supporting SuSE's efforts at creating good software. Furthermore, you can share it with a friend legally (you just can't burn your own CDRs and resell them).
Having the boxed distro is surely better than installing from FTP twice (each time is roughly at least 500 MB of files); and I believe even the Personal edition comes w/ SuSE's excellent manual. It'll show up on ftp (and mirrors) in about a month. SuSE's business model is to grow their units shipment, and not the overall userbase (through ISOs).
Personally, I think SuSE is a better distro than Red Hat (I've been using it since 6.2). However, if you need commercial 3rd-party software support, then Red Hat may be a better choice. They are the industry standard.