What's the difference between Hibernate and Standby?

I get asked this all the time ...What's the difference between Hibernate and Standby, well here it is in a nutshell.  Standby shuts down most of your computer except the ram...You see... all your information that you need in the computer is stored in ram and then the processor uses that info..It goes: Hard Drive to RAM to Processor.

Ram can only hold info as long as it has power...no power and it is wiped clean, that is why it takes so darn long to start your computer from a cold shutdown.  So in Standby you get a small trickle charge to the ram to keep that info alive, so to speak.

Hibernate on the other hand shuts down your computer completely...no trickle charge...what happens in Hibernate in just before the computer shuts down the info on the ram chips gets written to the hard drive and then shuts down, when you turn the computer back on from Hibernate that info that was written to the hard drive gets put back instantly to the ram.

So which is better or faster...

Standby is faster but uses that trickle charge , so for a laptop it can use up your battery and that can be bad....but for short term it is good. For a PC Standby has no down side

Hibernate takes a bit longer but uses no power...no power, no battery useage...slower but good for the long haul. For a PC Hibernate is just plain slower than Standby...unless you shut down your power bar at night to save the 3.7 cents a week in electric costs..

Hope this disolves the mystery of the Hibernate/Standby question.