I am not exactly a tech savvy person. I do not think much of computers and its technical stuff. If my computer hangs, I just press the power button till the computer shut downs and then turn it on again. If my internet connection does not work, I just don't use the internet or just use the Iphone.

But, today I was fiddling with the display settings on my computer for like probably the second time in my life. I realised I did not know the difference between hibernate and standby. In simple English:
A bear hibernates during winter
My job requires me to standby every night.

It does irk me everytime when my computer shutsdown standy? hibernate? after I leave it for a few minutes. But, my life does not depend on the computer. Hence, there was no rush or worries to quickly  wait for the computer to start.

As I was saying... Hibernate vs Standby.... I could not figure out the difference it does to my computer Don't both commands provide a easy and quick way to leave the computer in existing last state and allow us to come back to work on it at exactly the same state later without waiting too long to system to restore itself??? So, I googled and ah hah there is a difference. SLEEP IS AKA STANDBY

Hibernate vs. Standby

Using Standby:

Your machine recovers quickly as your data is stored in RAM. The slower part is waking up the peripherals. Although your machine is in "standby" the power has been cut to items such as your hard drive and monitor. You're running your machine in a very low power mode, but it is still on. This mode can be useful if you're on a notebook and need to conserve your battery while you step away.

Windows Vista has enhanced sleep mode so that on notebook computer, sleeping computer will automatically hibernate when battery power level is low. It also has built-in Hybrid Sleep mode which ensure that system state is preserved when there is power lost.

With Hibernate:

The big difference is that your PC has shut down and is not pulling power. Another difference is that your data is saved to your hard disk and not RAM. This makes it a safer, but slower option for shut down and resume.

Not all PCs have the capability and are configured to Hibernate. If yours is, to see the Hibernate option on your XP shutdown screen, hold down the Shift key when you shut down.

Hibernate, or S4 in ACPI, meanwhile will save the data in physical memory to hard disk drive (HDD), and then power off the computer. In Hibernate mode, a file named hiberfil.sys which has the same file size as the amount of system memory will be created on the local disk. When user wants to use the computer again, the computer will boot up and load back the state at the last hibernation. The advantage of Hibernation mode is that no power is wasted for maximum saving of power. In Hibernation dormancy, no electricity is consumed by system. Beside, restore from Hibernate is generally faster than computer reboot, and is totally different from fresh start, as users can return to the exact state of last hibernation with all programs running and documents opened intact, instead of empty desktop. The disadvantage of Hibernate is that after a period of time, there may have fragmentation of file. Users will need to defragment the volume that stores the hibernation file frequently.