My understanding of standby is that a small bit of power is left trickling to RAM so that the computer can boot up faster than if it were to be in hibernation.  Is anything else still “on”?  I’m concerned that perhaps the hard drive might still be active so that it’s open to damage were I to carry it around while in standby.  Valid concern?

I’d love to use standby instead of hibernate since it’s so much quicker to startup and I do a fair bit of moving around during the day so losing battery is not really a factor.

Yep, standby is where the CPU and hard drive are shut down but the RAM still gets power and retains its contents so that you can resume working quickly. Hibernation is when the contents of RAM get copied to a hibernation file on the hard disk and everything gets shut down. You do lose more power on standby, but since that’s not an issue, go with it if it’s more convienent for you.