Standby/Hibernate/Off

Reading about HP's design for the environment
stuff on their website, I was struck by the fact that there are now
three different 'off' modes for your computer. Standby retains
everything in RAM, so you get the 'instant-on' effect. Hibernate
writes the current settings to the hard drive, so you can start where
you left off after a delay of ten seconds or so. And finally Off, which
is where all programs are shut down and restart is from your basic
profile.



Of course, 'Off' isn't really 'off' at all, because most of these
machines have electronically operated off buttons (touch-sensitive
ones, for example) so there's still some residual current running
through them.But that's not my main thought.



What bugs me is this: why can't we fold 'standby' into 'hibernate'?
From the user's point of view, the only difference is that
hibernate shows you a 'please wait' screen for about ten seconds before
you can resume. Surely that's not necessary. Given that you're unlikely
to want to do anything computationally intensive for the first ten
seconds of operation, why not throw up the original screen and use an
hourglass for ten seconds or so, while the hard drive goes ballistic in
the background? Most XP users would regard this as nothing unusual, I'm
sure, and it would give the illusion of 'instant-on'.



Ultimately, I think it should be possible to create a progressive start
which enables you to carry on working in the application you were in
(obviously the point of the whole 'instant-on' thing) while it quietly
loads up the rest of your settings and background stuff. I just find
the energy inefficiency of the computer as a device to be irritating.