I just use hibernate instead. Marginally longer start up time and no more worries. For shorter periods I just leave it on (like when taking the laptop to a meeting room).
Hibernate is a lot harder to make work correctly, and can lead to problems in more niche cases, so it's not a guarantee
Huh? I have enabled that on hundreds of installations in the past and have yet to see an issue. It's neither hard nor does it lead to issues more than standby does. (Even less, from my XP)