Well, this thread accomplished one thing, at least; it finally prodded me enough to get around to applying the Rain-X that I bought many months ago to the windshield of my A4. We'll see how that does. Hopefully it's good enough that I'll be able to live with the stock wipers. If not, well, maybe I'll have to bite the bullet and order the B7 arms...

 

Ok, so we finally had a "real" rainstorm here that I had occasion to drive in after applying that Rain-X a few weeks ago, and let me tell you, that stuff is phenomenal. I was doing 60+ in HEAVY rain with my wipers shut off, and my visibility was fine. At speeds below 35 or so MPH, using the wipers becomes necessary, but they work way better than they used to. I still might get the B7 arms eventually, but I no longer feel like it's particularly important.