Can Macs be put in hibernation voluntarily?

I know that when you put your Mac laptop to sleep and the battery dies, next time you plug it in it will wake up from the state it was prior to being put to sleep. There are also hacks to get this behavior with a desktop Mac (except it triggers when you put the Mac to sleep and unplug it).

Is there a way to trigger this behavior without cutting power, and that will still let me put my Mac to sleep normally? Like Windows 7's Hibernate option.

Yes, of course you can. I myself use Deep Sleep widget (second link) to put my Macbook Pro into hibernation.

And if you prefer to use the command line, read this article.

You could use DeepSleep.

I know this is a widget, but if you want an application, do the following :

1. Download the widget and uncompress the zip file containing it, but do not install it.

2. Right-click on the widget, the select Show Package Contents.

   

3. Copy the DeepSleep Application where you want.

   

There is a pref pane called smart sleep that is pretty good