While I have never run the Hakkapeliittas, my wife has the Cooper Evolution Winter tires on her fwd Taurus, and they work better than the Blizzaks IMO. We can get anywhere from 150-200" of snow a year here, so we have something to compare them with. The fwd with winter tires does better than the previous AWD car with all season tires did. I was very surprised by that, and it made me wonder what the AWD would have done with better tires.
We travel too much to deal with studs, but the new winter tires are WAY better than they used to be. I will never buy an all season tire again if I can help it. All season just means they suck at everything, but will usually just get by.