/edit P.S. Adding this one line, as I forget if you mentioned this, but have your wife try out the laptop in the stores. The keyboard is awesome but may not be for everyone. Someone who used an Air for a long time shouldn't have any issues but I would definitely try it first just to be sure.

My pleasure.

I was in a similar situation, using the 2011 13.3 Air for years as a secondary device (being what I guess others would consider a "power user" I have always kept available a bitching desktop and/or (now) a bunch of cloud VMs, depending on the task), super happy with it (my Air is the best laptop I've ever owned, having started in about 1998), but wanting to upgrade, and watching the last Apple keynote in anticipation of a Retina Air. And I'm very happy with the new MB. It's not quite what I was expecting but if the form factor and power suits your needs, it's great.

Whew. That a was quite the run-on sentence.

Anyway, regarding Win8, I have to use it at work a lot and I feel your pain, it's pretty damned awkward at times. My experience so far is that the best way to navigate it is to a) use the search facility on the Start Screen to access your usual stuff (similar to OSX searchlight, so, Windows key to get to the Start Screen and then just start typing out the application or file name... its kind of awesome when it works) and b) set the OS to default to the desktop view on boot, in which case it's almost exactly the same as 7. The best way to look at it IMO is that Win8 = a more efficient Win 7 kernel + a mobile/tablet/metro API + a new UI start screen. Once you get past that it's surprisingly good.

But yeah, I feel your pain.