Sleep or Hibernate ?

I have herd arguements both ways, one issue I herd was that in "sleep" mode the system keeps running and in a enclosed bag (laptop bag or backpack) can overheat fast, also I have herd hibetrnate is borked up.

Well, I have hibernated and also used sleep, but whats the reccomended way.

If its hibernate, how can I just remove the sleep option from the shutdown options, and if its sleep how can I remove the hibernate options ?

Thankyas

Just Like Coke vs Pepsi, it really boils down your own personal preference. Both drawbacks you list can be true. The main difference though is that sleep does not totally power down your system. Which is why a laptop in a bag will get hot. It still draws power to the memory, which is why it restarts so quickly. However if the power is interrupted for any reason, battery dead, unplugged, brown/blackout, you lose what was running at the time. Hibernate saves everything to the hard disk and totally powers down the entire system. Power can og out or battery removed and it will still return to the last state it was in when it hibernated albeit in a slightly longer amount of time than the Sleep function. Catch is the file what it uses to store the hibernation data, (hiberfil.sys) is very large (typically equal to the amount of RAM you have installed) and can become corrupted which can cause various problems.

Either way the easiest way to shutdown in whatever manner you decide is to assign the Start menu Power button to do either option under Control Panel/Power Options/Advanced options. Also if your keyboard has a sleep button (It typically looks like a crescent moon) then that sometimes can be programed to do the same thing as well.

Explanation here:

Standby (sleep) vs Hibernate vs Hybrid sleep (desktops) in Vista

Personally I just close the Laptop's lid, let it go to sleep mode, then put it in the bag. On my Dell I have not encountered a problem. On my Lenovo, I had 2 incidents where the laptop never really powered down and the laptop was cooking when I opened the bag. Luckily there was no damage. I still use sleep mode on the Lenovo but I don't fully close the zipper of the bag.

On my desktop I use Hybrid Sleep... but do a shutdown/reboot at least once a week.