With Classic Shell (free; mine actually shipped with it but it was not installed by default; I did indeed install it), Win8 is now Win7 for me. Also, it boots faster then Win7 (and I thought Win7 was fast in the day). Every so often, I do a shutdown /p (run as administrator) to get a full boot; the regular boot is some sort of hibernate hybrid as I understand it (explains why booting is so fast). Have your hubby install classic shell (see link below; it's open source) and he will then love Win8.
http://www.classicshell.net/