Quote - "That seems a little harsh IMO but I'll reserve comment as I don't know enough about the situation."

Yes, truth can be harsh.

Quote - "So are you saying the clouds will render at the same speed in 7 as 6 but they will look a lot better by comparison."

I didn't say that. I said that Vue7 has a new type of clouds (spectral2) that look really good but are slower to render than the normal spectral clouds. The render time of Vue7 and Vue6 regarding normal clouds is aproximately the same, there were no big improvements that I could detect in this specific area.

Quote - "I was hoping if I bought Vue 7 it might cut the render times of the same scene in half but it sounds like I might be disappointed if I am expecting something of a 50% improvement in render times in Vue 7."

You should not expect improvements in this range, that's too much to hope for in general but especially in clouds. But there's one thing that is new in Vue7 and that is important for animations: the calculation of indirect lighting can be made once and then reutilized in the following frames. As I read (because I never do animations), that saves a lot of time but, of course, it'll also depend on the subject being rendered (I don't know if that's very relevant for your specific scene). No doubt, the best is for you to try it out for yourself.