Cameron of the microsoft.public.windows.vista.general newsgroup actually 
solved the problem for me. Apparently, I was trying to fix something that 
wasn't really broken, just experiencing a different behavior than before. 
She said... "in sleep it will wake up if there is a high priority task 
scheduled. After completion it goes to sleep again. This is a great feature 
for some of us."

Even though Sleep is in a low power mode, it actually does the very same 
thing in Hibernate mode as well, which is suppose to be shut down. After 
Cameron said this, I watched what happened in both modes, and sure enough, 
she was indeed right. The laptop would turn itself back one, for apparently 
a scheduled task, then go back to either Sleep or Hibernate. Therefore, it 
apparently wasn't behaving incorrectly, just different from what it had been 
doing before.

Likewise, most everyone else was also trying to help me fix a problem that 
wasn't really a problem. That's apparently why none of their idea and 
suggestions were working. As I mentioned before, I recently upgraded from 
(iolo.com) System Mechanic 7 Professional to System Mechanic 8 Professional, 
when I first noticed this behavior. Seemingly, this upgrade put any 
scheduled task in the background and would wake from both Sleep and 
Hibernate to perform this task, than go back to Sleep/Hibernate. This did 
not happen in System Mechanic 7 Professional, which allowed me to put the 
computer in Hibernate and take it to and from work in its carrying case. All 
I really need to do now is actually shut down the computer, so I won't take 
a change of it actually waking up while in transit. This is rather a simple 
and acceptable solution now that I know what's really going on.

What has disappointed me though, is my inquiries to iolo.com itself as to 
what was happening, but with no response, expect for some generic and 
useless information.

Thanks to everyone, especially Cameron, for the help, ideas and suggestions.

John