laboye

Standby is fine. When a computer is in standby, it halts the hard drive, downs the processor (and it's fan) and only draws enough power to keep the memory going. The computer will NOT get hot at all. Closing a computer while on will generally have no adverse effects as it does not emmit lots of heat from the keyboard. Shutting down and booting up, if anything would just shorten your hard drive's life by a couple days (they should last for 10 years, if you take care of them). Standby and Hibernate modes do not power on devices, and ergo do not generate heat.

It is safe to leave your computer on standby for extended periods of time. If you are running on a battery, the battery power will likely drain and die within a couple of days. Use hibernate if you plan to not use it for that long. Both modes resume right where you left off, but hibernate saves whatever is in memory to the hard drive in a 'hibernation file', then completely shut's down the computer, using no power whatsoever.