DF or AG As mentioned, Capital is coming out with a DF soon but not sure what that will entail in the way of electronics or third element convection. If these don't have the kinks worked out it can be very unpleasant. The upper end DF w/electric ovens will have a lot of baking and roasting modes but this can mean lots of electronics. The DF with different modes is great though if you do a lot of baking/roasting and want the ability to direct heat from the top or bottom. You might also have third element convection, which is a benefit to keep the heat even with the oven full. Many are happy with gas too though. If you wife bakes commercially, and tests recipes at home she might want to have an oven most like what she will use at work. Convection is new to me with my current range and I do have the different modes which I love. The electric ovens may keep a little tighter swing in the temperature but not sure if this will impact your baking all that much. There are all kinds of wild claims about sealed vs unsealed burners. The real thing I would consider here is the amount of BTUS both on the low end and the high end. If you stir fry a lot or need to heat water quickly then, go with the high end of BTUs, but also consider how much you use the low end and how many burners do you want to be on the low end. The sealed burner does flare slightly but this is a benefit if you use bigger(10inch+) pans. Once the hottest part of the flame hits the pan, heat will move more to the center of the pan,than to the outside. Some ranges will have different size burners for this reason. Try to find some live ranges so you can cook on them. As far as cleaning, it is more of a personal preference. Consider the placement of the ignitor and if it will bother you to have it exposed. Have you thought about induction at all? I like self clean but if you don't and have an oven with electronics, you are eliminating some of the risk to the boards. Grill is a personal preference. We do ours outdoors, even in the winter but others wouldn't be without one. As for a griddle, I like flexibility. I like my six burners to be burners when I want them to be and cover either 2 or 4 burners with an add on griddle(Chef King) There are also add on griddles non stick and aluminum. Here is a link that might be useful: Chef King

I have cooked on all three and the TEK IR is the only gas grill that cooks as well as charcoal. It's advantages over charcoal are that it is quick to set up, easy to clean up and does an excellent job of creating the charcoal taste. As many here know, the flavor is created by the smoke from the fat striking the hot surface be it charcoal or something else. The higher the IR energy (from gas or charcoal) and the less the flame, the more smoke generated rather than being turned into additional flame. The TEK creates a great deal of smoke because the IR glass sits between the flame and the dripping grease. On older style IR burners there is still an open flame to ignite the grease drippings reducing the amount of smoke to add flavor. With charcoal, once the embers are glowing red, it is emitting a lot of IR and much less to no flame and hence produces a lot of smoke and flavor. I have owned the FireMagic and I would not purchase another. The burners are cast SS but they still do rust over time and the flavor grills wear out too. They are very hard to clean and the heat was not anywhere near as good as the advertisements. If you are the type that never clean a grill and don't mind a gritty looking grill it may not matter. I am the type that wants it to look clean and inviting each time and the self cleaning feature along with the dishwasher removal panels makes the TEK a breeze to clean and keep looking nice. For me that was worth a lot. The more conventional grills like the Firemagic, even with their ceramic infrared burner are not even a close match.

Installer recommended by friend is fired. I texted him my schedule last Thursday (the day he no showed) and it is Tuesday,and I have not heard back. I found another guy who actually has a company installing doors. He comes tomorrow (Wednesday) I did not buy through the Pella store. The lady there was more interested in making a sale, pushing things I was not interested in, and thought it unreasonable to actually have a few squares of the different decorative glass options Pella offers. She kept repeating, "But we offer examples and place orders through our catalog". Small sample pieces of each grain type (mahogany, oak, craftsman, etc)with the different stain colors was foreign language. It blew her mind. She kept thinking door size samples and I was asking about a 6x6 sample or something. She seemed to be missing a few cards from the deck, as it interrupted her trained sales pitch. Lowes actually had a lot of samples in actual doors. We visited 4-5 times before making the commitment to buy. They also were having a 20% off sale in April. We worked with two guys. One not so helpful and the other, very knowledgable and helpful. We obviously did not go with Pella installation people (you have to buy through them to get it) nor Lowes installation. I am eager to see how it looks tomorrow. And hope that we do not have to deal with Pella customer service. I hear there is none.

Q1&Q2: Have had Wolf IR char-broiler and currently have Capital hybrid grill. Both are gas, can't speak to electric grills other than an explicative-laced tirade on my Jenn-Air of long ago. The smoke levels are about the same (impossible to test as can't run both side-by-side). What is more important than the smoke is the total amount of effluent (hot air, steam and grease)--those should be very similar and need to be exhausted. Q1 and Q 2 pretty much noes in my opinion. We had a 600CFM VH oversized over the Wolf and a 1200CFM Modern-aire (similarly sized) over the Capital. The VH did a good job, the Modern-aire clears everything. We found the usual formulae for computing CFMs based on BTUs not so helpful given the susceptibility of the effluent to air cross currents and kitchen layout. The VH was in a fairly tight and contained northern kitchen, the MA is in a house with heat pumps that move a large volume of air and the additional CFMs were necessary. For us bottom line was to go as powerful as we could due to grill, stirfry and panbroiling. If the grill is part of the range or rangetop, the price differential should be minimal other than overall range brand price differentials. Module installs will probably vary by brand. A separate grill would probably be higher cost due to larger hood and and installation costs. Probably not the answer you may have wanted . . .