Warmfridge, I really had concerns about the installation of the slide in, but it turned out perfect. I have full overlay doors that are within a 1/4" of the stove, and I was getting nervous about the min 1" clearance called out in the specs, but it was unfounded. The doors open with no problem, I really do not know what that min dimension is for. My granite overhangs but approx 1.25", and the stove slides back and touches it, so there are no issues there either. Either way I am sure you will have a great range, we really love ours.

We just had a Whirlpool glass top range put in last week -tomorrow it would be one week. I was cooking chicken noodle soup on it tonight, took the lid off to stir the soup and set it on the cooktop (I only had one burner going). When I went to pick the lid up (about 30 sec later) it was stuck/suctioned to the cooktop. I left it b/c I didn't want to scratch it. About 2 min later the whole cooktop shattered. The place under the lid was in a million pieces. The rest of it had cracks. We had a glass cooktop prior to this but it had 4 quadrants -this one is one solid piece of glass. I think the 4 quadrants help temper the heat better. Have to call Whirlpool tomorrow and see what they're going to do about it.

Here's my additional 2 cents worth from having looked pretty hard at both of the GE ranges last fall when I was stove shopping. First, on noise -- are you asking about cooktop noise or noise from the cooling fans for the electronics? If the latter, the reports here are that both the freestanding and slide-in stoves have cooling fans for the electronics but neither has been especially noticable. Some of the earlier Samsung FTQ induction ranges did have a problem with their fans being noisy and running for a long time. (That was supposedly fixed and I ahven't seen any such complaints about on the current NE59x models.) Also, I've seen complaints of noise in some KitchenAid slide-ins after KA/WP upgraded the electronics cooling fans to deal with the spate of board failures during or as a result of oven self-cleaning. Found nothing like that on the GE induction ranges. If, on the other hand, you mean cooktop noise as in buzzing, humming, ringing, etc. while pans heat up, the answer is that, so far, the answer is there is no difference between the slide-in and freestanding GE models. As for the question of whether the reliability of the slide-in will differ from that of the free-standing, it is too early to really know. The stoves haven't been on the market long enough. In theory, having the electronic controls at the front of the slide-in is a location that puts them where they might get more oven heat than the higher backsplash mounted boards in the feestanding version. Especially during high-heat oven self-cleaning. Also, you might be more likely to spill hot liquids etc. onto the front mounted electronic control panel. Back in the old days (three decades ago when the first round of induction stoves were being sold here in North America), spills on cooktop control surfaces could cause problems. Not sure how much of a problem it is with current touchpads style of controls. A lot of drop-in induction cooktops have them and I haven't seen a lot of reports about failures. so that might not be the problem it used to be. But what I've just said is concern about risk, however, not experienced based predictions. So, at this point, we just do not k now the answer to your question about long term reliability. Some other points. Oven vents: both the slide-in and the freestanding vent the oven in the back of the cooktop. The slide-in has a low "island trim" kind of vent, like the ones the GE Cafe ranges. I was told but was not able to verify) that the low and thin backguard for the Cafe stoves can be used with the induction slide-in if you want something to keep things from rolling off the stove stop behind the stove. Apparently it is possible for things on the stove top to fall into the low oven vent grate. There was a thread here last winter where that happened to somebody with one of these stoves. We explained about CMPFs (flexible projecting grabbers) which he got from the hardware store and retrieved whatever little thing had fallen in there. On the front of the slide-in is another vent which is the exhaust for the control board cooling fans. The parts diagrams can be confusing and make it seem like these might be for the oven. This issue came up last winter and was sorted out (with photos and parts diagrams) somewhere in that long thread that fauguy started on the GE slide in. As far as anybody here has been able to tell, there doesn't seem to be any apparent difference between the freestanding and slide-in as far as oven and stovetop performance go. There is a bit of a difference between them in the usable space on the cooktop with the slide-in being a few inches shallower than the freestanding. This seems counterintuitive, But here's what I figured out in my stove shopping expedition. The usable cooktop surface on the freestanding range is 29 7/8 wide and about 22" deep (from the front of the cooktop to the point on the back where a stockpot would butt up against the backsplash. (This is my recollection of the one I measured in a store about a year ago, so you might want to verify this because my memory may be faulty.) On the slide-in, the cooktop surface is 31,25 inches wide and 19-inches deep. (Got that figure from the GE website in the Q&A). Of course, you know that the slide-in's stove body is actually 29 7/8" wide but the cooktop is designed to overhang the counters to the sides and so is a little wider. The depth of the cooktop glass is 19 inches from the front edge of the oven vent at the back of the stove to the back edge of the control panel framing on the front of the stove. (Yes, I know that both stoves are deeper, but we're talking about the cooking surface, not the entire stove body.) Those front and rear frames limit how pots can overhang to the front or back and thus limit how many big pans you can put on at one time. If you get a 12" frying pan with flaring sides --- and by the way, you do know that the base of those kinds of pans is typically around 9 to 10 inches and that the 12"measurement is the diameter across the top of the pan? --- you might not have any problem with overhang ont he slide-in. The pans may be high enough and flared enough to that they don't hit those frames. But a larger pan with straight sides might not fit, particularly when you have two 12" fry pans on the front burners,. The freestanding gives you a bit more leeway. If you need/want the leeway. THis is the kind of small thing that some folks find important and that others could care less about. This post was edited by JWVideo on Tue, Jul 23, 13 at 21:39

Your main issue with putting a cooktop over a wall oven will be clearances. Most wall ovens (if not all) are built with the assumption that nothing is on top of them. Hence the control panel intrudes several inches into the cabinet. I remember someone having this issue in that the cooktop could not be dropped in without banging into the oven cover that intruded about an inch into the space required for the cooktop. you will have to look at the 'naked' oven and see how far the panel intrudes into the cooktop space, as well as how far the cooktop goes into the cabinet (depth minus counter top thickness and cabinet top, if any). Excess heat might require that you ventilate the cabinet. Many of the European induction tops talk about this since they contain fans. European cabinets typically stand off the floor on legs and sit away from the wall thus allowing air to flow behind them if you knotch the cabinet below the counter top. For us with toe kicks, one needs to either drill holes or cut them out a bit and put a dark screen in place. Some cabinets sit flat against the wall, some don't (the sidewalls protrude a bit beyond the back board). If you're getting custom cabinets, have the cabinet maker make something for you. Otherwise you can, depending on your cabinet maker, find a base unit that will work or that could be modified. There are ones (or used to be) for drop-in ranges.