Quote:
I don't think there is going to be a huge difference in the remaining power in your battery, as when you're in sleep/hibernate/standby whatever you call that, the only power that's being maintained is your RAM which consumes negligible wattage
Sleep / Standby are different to hibernate - in hibernation the contents of RAM is written out to disk, so no power at all is required for the RAM.
SD
Just to reinforce what SD has said there is a huge difference between sleep/standby and hibernate.
Hibernate will commit the memory to disk and effectively power down the machine. Sleeping is disabling all non essential components but leaving the machine running.
Whilst they may sound similar, if you sleep a laptop and chuck it in a case you have a high chance of everything overheating as the ventilation has gone. If you hibernate you dont need the ventilation as you have effectively powered down.