Yes, they are. My previous HP Pavilion was quite limited. The i5 also only 2 cores and for working with Vue it was kind of slow but no choice. Someone got rid of his HP, it's not the newest one, it's a DV7, but it is an improvement. It has 4 cores, 8 threads and I really notice that. The 2 extra Gb's or RAM give me a little more to work with. The graphics card is faster and better then the one in the i5 and has 2Gb of dedicated memory. Overal the 'new' laptop is a nice improvement over the old, but compared to what most Vue user have, it's still lacking. I'm happy with the huge step up though!

Oh, almost forgot, it has a 17" screen, instead of 15" on my previous one. More space to work in :)

Artwork and 3DToons items, create the perfect place for you toon and other figures!

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?vendor=23722

Due to the childish TOS changes, I'm not allowed to link to my other products outside of Rendo anymore :(

Food for thought.....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYZw0dfLmLk