In many cases, It's not very different. But some people are leasing HP just to avoid having to power up hive but still having vote worth something.
I personally prefer having most of my Hive liquid, but I'm leasing HP to keep my vote value at ~$0.1 (even if I'm losing money since I pay more than I get from curation).
Right, still breaking proof of brain,...I guess I am one of the few remaining that care about the original dream of creating original content to get rewards.
Now we just buy them, and everybody that knows the difference has cashed out.