Joseph,
I tried the 3.10-rc4-saucy kernel as advised.
The system boots. During the boot, the splash screen does not appear (screen remains black after the purple background of grub until the display manager kicks in). There is no kernel oops and Wifi is operational.
BUT...
It is impossible to properly shutdown the machine. When I shutdown from X, I get a black screen, lots of HDD activity and then nothing but it stays up.
I tried from a text console. There I get some messages, the last one being system is going for HALT.

Might be worth to know: I installed nouveau-firmware 20091212-0ubuntu1, linux-firmware 1.106 and linux-firmware-nonfree 1.14ubuntu1. Also, I uninstalled Oracle VirtualBox drivers.

However, in dmesg, I see the following worrying messages:

1)
[    2.882217] [drm] Wrong MCH_SSKPD value: 0x16040307
[    2.882218] [drm] This can cause pipe underruns and display issues.
[    2.882219] [drm] Please upgrade your BIOS to fix this.

2)
[   30.815712] WARNING: at /home/apw/COD/linux/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c:8207 intel_modeset_stage_output_state.isra.28+0x364/0x3b0 [i915]()
[   30.815714] Modules linked in: parport_pc ppdev rfcomm bnep ext2 dm_crypt joydev arc4 iwldvm mac80211 intel_powerclamp coretemp snd_hda_codec_conexant uvcvideo snd_hda_intel snd_hda_codec snd_hwdep videobuf2_vmalloc snd_pcm videobuf2_memops snd_page_alloc thinkpad_acpi kvm iwlwifi psmouse videobuf2_core nvram snd_seq_midi snd_seq_midi_event videodev snd_rawmidi snd_seq snd_seq_device snd_timer btusb lp cdc_mbim cdc_acm cdc_wdm snd bluetooth parport lpc_ich mac_hid soundcore cdc_ncm serio_raw cfg80211 usbnet microcode tpm_tis hid_generic usbhid hid nouveau e1000e crc32_pclmul ptp i915 aesni_intel aes_i586 firewire_ohci xts mxm_wmi lrw ttm pps_core ahci i2c_algo_bit gf128mul video firewire_core drm_kms_helper ablk_helper libahci sdhci_pci cryptd drm sdhci wmi crc_itu_t
[   30.815743] CPU: 2 PID: 1403 Comm: Xorg Not tainted 3.10.0-031000rc4-generic #201306020443
[   30.815744] Hardware name: LENOVO 428449G/428449G, BIOS 8BET58WW (1.38 ) 07/06/2012
[   30.815746]  f87f8f30 f87f8f30 ea6b9dc8 c15fb5e8 ea6b9df0 c1038da4 c17d593f f87f8f30
[   30.815750]  0000200f f87b79d4 f87b79d4 e9d69a00 f5f7a980 e9d69a09 ea6b9e00 c1038de2
[   30.815753]  00000009 00000000 ea6b9e44 f87b79d4 0000044c 0000046a 00000048 0000000a
[   30.815757] Call Trace:
[   30.815763]  [<c15fb5e8>] dump_stack+0x16/0x18
[   30.815766]  [<c1038da4>] warn_slowpath_common+0x64/0x80
[   30.815776]  [<f87b79d4>] ? intel_modeset_stage_output_state.isra.28+0x364/0x3b0 [i915]
[   30.815784]  [<f87b79d4>] ? intel_modeset_stage_output_state.isra.28+0x364/0x3b0 [i915]
[   30.815786]  [<c1038de2>] warn_slowpath_null+0x22/0x30
[   30.815794]  [<f87b79d4>] intel_modeset_stage_output_state.isra.28+0x364/0x3b0 [i915]
[   30.815801]  [<f87b7c87>] ? intel_set_config_compute_mode_changes.isra.37+0x107/0x170 [i915]
[   30.815811]  [<f87c11c4>] intel_crtc_set_config+0x114/0x300 [i915]
[   30.815816]  [<c12d8e60>] ? copy_to_user+0x40/0x60
[   30.815825]  [<f8543e95>] drm_mode_set_config_internal+0x25/0x50 [drm]
[   30.815829]  [<f8485e2d>] drm_fb_helper_restore_fbdev_mode+0x2d/0x50 [drm_kms_helper]
[   30.815841]  [<f87dcfaa>] intel_fb_restore_mode+0x4a/0xd0 [i915]
[   30.815849]  [<f8540fa5>] ? drm_ht_remove+0x35/0x40 [drm]
[   30.815856]  [<f853d47b>] ? drm_master_destroy+0x10b/0x130 [drm]
[   30.815863]  [<f879635d>] i915_driver_lastclose+0x3d/0x50 [i915]
[   30.815869]  [<f8538185>] drm_lastclose+0x45/0x240 [drm]
[   30.815877]  [<f853892e>] drm_release+0x30e/0x470 [drm]
[   30.815881]  [<c1150216>] __fput+0x96/0x200
[   30.815883]  [<c115038d>] ____fput+0xd/0x10
[   30.815885]  [<c10577d9>] task_work_run+0x79/0xb0
[   30.815887]  [<c1001a07>] do_notify_resume+0x97/0xa0
[   30.815889]  [<c1605543>] work_notifysig+0x24/0x29
[   30.815891] ---[ end trace 3a3097ee6d5191be ]---

Any clue what to do about this ?

Thanks,

Olivier