How to control the time before Windows 7 wakes from standby and hibernates?

Solution 1:

From chronos's comment on the question:

Have you tried configuring "Standby after" and "Hibernate after" in Control Panel -> Power management? I'm 75% sure the times you set there control the behaviour of your laptop. Other 20% go for the battery charge-based actions (which you can also configure). Remaining 5% cover all other possibilities.

I think the "Standby after" and "Hibernate after" options did it. It seems that Windows goes into standby with an alarm set to wake up at exactly [hibernate after] time, and when it wakes up it automatically hibernates. I don't know the details of the technology though, and since Darth Android completely misinterpreted the behavior in his answer, it might not be something that is supported by every computer or that everyone is aware of. (My laptop was purchased October 2006 though, so I'd expect all recent computers to exhibit this behavior)

By the way, desktops do something similar but a lot cooler, which is called Hybrid sleep; when you activate hybrid sleep, they save RAM to disk like hibernation, but then they enter standby rather than turning off. It's the best of both worlds: turning the PC back on is instant, but if power is lost, then next time the computer is awakened it will restore its RAM from disk.