I must admit, jimtherev, I'm with you on that. Whilst my XP Media Server's TV tuner gets its knickers in a twist if I resume it from standby (state S3) or hibernate (state S4), the rest of the machine works just fine afterwards.
I have used hibernate on my XP and W7 work laptops for years almost without issue; it's my standard way of shutting down for travel and I can only recall one occasion in all that time where resume didn't work properly. It's quite normal that the only time I reboot is when Windows Update has resulted in an update that needs it. Perhaps I have been lucky with the drivers I need and have installed, but I speak as I find.