I've never quite understood the original purpose of the Hibernation power state in Windows. I understand how it works, what processes take place, and what happens when you boot back up from Hibernate, but I've never truly understood why it's used.

With today's technology, most notably with SSDs, RAM and CPUs becoming faster and faster, a cold boot on a clean/efficient Windows installation can be pretty fast (for some people, mere seconds from pushing the power button). Standby is even faster, sometimes instantaneous. Even SATA drives from 5-6 years ago can accomplish these fast boot times.

Hibernation seems pointless to me when modern technology is considered, but perhaps there are applications that I'm not considering.

What was the original purpose behind hibernation, and why do people still use it?

Edit:

I rescind my comment about hibernation being obsolete, as it obviously has very practical applications to laptops and mobile PCs, considering the power restrictions. I was mostly referring to hibernation being used on a desktop.