what are the differences in hibernate and normal shut down? is hibernate better?

Answer 1

Hibernate is when your laptop is running low on power and it preserves everything exactly the way it is until it can recover. Shut down it when everything is closed, all programs are shut down, and the computer is turned off.

Answer 2

Hibernate is a feature that it takes an image of your running computer/laptop as it is at the time of hibernate to the hard drive, it will not close applications, will not stop services, nothing it ll do... just it stops the system, when ever u starts the system it will restores u to the point of before hibernate. where as shutdown closes all the running applications and services and stops the system power.