Noncompliant wrote:
Neither one turns the computer off.

I completely disagree. Hibernate, as has been mentioned, saves what is
in RAM to the harddisk and then shuts off the computer. I have swapped
laptop hard drives that were in a "hibernate" state and when swapping
back I get the same point I was at. If you tell the computer to
hibernate, it WILL turn the computer off. (I do this with my laptop all
the time and rarely if ever have a problem - definitely haven't had a
problem with hibernate for at least a year).

-Lee