PLEASE Comment :)

Hi all,

I need your help and opionions on a very important and urgent matter.

I will try to make this as quick and painless as possible...

The lowdown:
We need to purchase a stove for our new home. Our price range is +/- $1200. It must be stainless steel. We can't decide between gas or electric.

The problem:
We were going to go with gas, but then had a salesman convince us to purchase an electric stove (no time to go through the whole story). We bought a smooth top electric stove and are now having second thoughts. We can change our mind by end of day tomorrow (Friday).

The pros and cons:
Gas

Pros:

• Gas is more efficient
• Gas is somewhat cheaper than electric
• Gas is easier to control in terms of temperature; instant heat, instant cold
• It would be an upgrade to our home = better resale
• Somewhat more utilitarian
• Can use any kinds of pots and pans

Cons:

• With our price range we will not be able to afford a gas stove with convection oven
• Will need to spend $300 to put gas line in kitchen (which is fine as we're considering it an investment for the house for future resale)
• Knobs for gas stoves are located on the front which makes me nervous when we have little kids running around the house = could turn knobs on and gas might be leaking into house without knowing or could turn flame on and hurt themselves and / or house
• More parts on cooktop might make cleaning more tedious (more parts to clean)
• Open flame could be dangerous with sleeves

Electric

Pros:

• We can afford a convection oven which is more efficient than baking without one as it reduces the amount of time in the oven and level of temperature
• Save $300 because no need to install gas line
• No open flame = safer for things like sleeves
• Knobs located at back of stove therefore no danger of small children turning on stove

Cons:

• Glass/ceramic smooth top has the potential to chip, scratch and break
• Glass/ceramic smooth top might be harder to clean since you have to be somewhat careful
• Pots and pans must be completely smooth or else risk scratching and might not cook properly
• Cooking surface stays hot / warm longer
• Not sure what heats up the ceramic top - is it a coil burner like the old stoves? If so, then I'm not convinced spending the extra $ for a smooth top is worthwhile. Also if it is a coil burner underneath, wouldn't that mean the ceramic top would make it heat up slower than the old coil burner stoves?
• Not sure if it is expensive or difficult to repair or replace an element if it burns out

Any other thoughts, comments, suggestions, pros, cons etc. are most welcome :)

Thank you!