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I always tell my laptop to hibernate using the power button, but how does that differ from using Start > Shut Down > Stand By ?

The standby mode is one that leaves your laptop on my dear friend but saving a little of battery life.The hibernation mode is a shut down mode that saves your settings and resumes your windows directly when you push the power button again

Yes, I tried Stand By for the first time after starting this and noticed after a minute it leaves the power light flashing slowly. Doesn't seem nearly as useful. After trying them both, I recommend hibernation. ;-)

The only downsides to hibernation are that it takes more time to wake up and you lose your RAM worth of diskspace to the hibernation file.

For me it seems to wake up just as quick. What do you mean you lose your RAM worth of diskspace?

Maybe you have too little RAM to notice?

When your computer hibernates, the contents of the RAM are written to your hard drive and the computer is completely shut down. When the operating system boots (after you turn on the computer again), it loads the RAM contents from the hibernation file and continues from wherever it left off. This is really cool when you have several operating systems. For example, I can hibernate Windows, boot into Linux, reboot and continue in Windows from where I left off and vice versa

When your computer goes on standby, most of the components are shut down, but the system memory remains powered. When you wake up the computer, it just continues where it was before suspend without any kind of bootup or loading of hibernation data.

That information is just saved temporarily though right? :-O

Temporary till you re-open the computer...If its a laptop you dont want it to take too much heat or run much on AC power,so eventually you will re-open it.If it's a desktop it will do the same thing and a laptop DC power until it runs out(This is my question is NO LITTLE of electricity used in hibernation?) anyway regardless you will turn off ur laptop!Now in case of hibernation it only lasts till you re-open the computer.Then everything such as "ur changes" will stay as long as ur computer is on...I HOPE YOU GOT MY POINT THIS WAS TOO MUCH MESSY!

In Windows, the hiberfil.sys sits right next to the pagefile and I don't think anything ir erased from it when you start up.. So, yeah.. I'd guess the file contains the contents of your RAM since the last hibernation. (Your pagefile contents are also kept intact between Windows sessions BTW (unless you ask Windows to clear the pagefile every time)).

Linux (and probably other unixoids) use the swap partition/file to store hibernation data so parts of it will probably be overwritten as you use your computer, but no guarantees of course.

To answer a question I think was asked, when you hibernate XP, it uses no power at all until you switch it back on again.

hibernation is when you sleep all winter.

stand-by is when you're promised a ticket at the airline, and don't get it!

hibernation is when the system completely shuts dows, but the RAM isnt cleared, standby is just a powered down state (lower HDD speeds, lower processer and fan speeds stuff like that)

rofl