Hibernate a Sony Vaio PCG-FRV37 on Ubuntu

BTW, this is specific -or better yet, tested- to Lucid Lynx 32 bits...

1- Logout Gnome
2- Swtich to Virtual Terminal
3- Login to the shell
4- Issue the commands:

sudo /etc/init.d/gdm stop

or

sudo service gdm stop

This last one kills the X Window Server.

5- And then, actually put the lappie to sleep:

sudo pm-hibernate

Presto, the beast sleeps, or hibernates... Until you wake it up.
Does this beats shutting it down? Not sure, since you are actually login out from your Gnome session there is not much of a speed gain, nor there is on the time it takes from waking up from hibernation. The only advantage I can think of is that the HDD make a few pulls during the "spin-up from hibernation" than from a full boot.