Mountain Lion also adds some cool features like iCloud and iMessage integration, and my personal favorite, Power Nap:
"When your Mac goes to sleep, it still gets things done with Power Nap. It periodically updates Mail, Contacts, Calendar, Reminders, Notes, Photo Stream, Find My Mac, and Documents in the Cloud. When your Mac is connected to a power source, it downloads software updates and makes backups with Time Machine. While all that updating is going on, the system sounds are silent and no lights or fans come on, so nothing disturbs you. And when your Mac wakes up, it’s good to go."
I don't know if you think that everyone urging you to upgrade is lying to you or if you're just being obstinate. It's OK if you don't want to upgrade to Mountain Lion but stop complaining about problems that have been solved.
However, Power Nap only works on recent Apple notebooks with flash storage and cool microprocessors (like your MacBook Air).
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/07/os-x-10-8/18/#power-man...
http://www.macworld.com/article/1167970/up_close_with_mounta...