2012 11" i7 versus 2011 11" i7 Refurbished

I'm planning to buy two Macbook Air 11" models fully loaded, one for my wife, one for me. If I buy two of the 2011 version refurbished from Apple, it's half the money of buying two of the new one.

Besides the difference in hard drive size with the 2012 model (512 gb versus 256 loaded), is there that much of a performance difference between the two i7s (2011 vs 2012)?

Re

My thinking was just to get either model maxed out on ram and hard drive. My wife will use hers for iTunes, iPhoto, Word, maybe iMovie. I'll use mine primarily for Word, Logos (Bible Software), and occasionally CS6 (when I travel overseas and need to update work graphics etc.). For my main work laptop I have a MBPRO 17" loaded. My thinking is I'll leave the 17" at work and use the 11" at home in the evenings for my school work (working on a doctoral degree). I do have to use Windows 7 with VMWare occasionally, especially when I'm working on a paper that has a lot of Hebrew in it. Doing the latter in Windows is just easier. The 11" for my wife will replace her Black Macbook, which I think we purchased in 2006. It's on its last legs.