Please note, the open burners are the old style ring burners where the flame shoots out the sides, like the type every one made before the sealed burners came out, not at all like the CC, Bluestar, or American Range open burners. Also only 14,000 btu. The Fivestar sealed burners are 18,900 btu, and probbably easier to keep clean than those open rings. If the reason you are going for the duel fuel is because of the large oven, small oven combo, forget the duel fuel and go for this Capital Precision http://www.ajmadison.com/cgi-bin/ajmadison/GCR486B.html for less money. six burners and a grille. You can use a griddle pan on the girlle, and the Capital is a true grille not a reversible grille/griddle pan that you could just as well use over twwo burners.

I drove around until I found one to look at. Personally I was not impressed. Thought they looked alot better on the web site. Quality of construction just didn't feel up to par. Oven doors felt flimsy and the racks did not operate smoothly. I was truly disappointed since I was hoping it would fit my needs. I drove even further to find a Capital Precision. Now that range did impress me. Of course it was pricier however even comparing it with other pricier ranges it was nice. Let me put it this way, I was so impressed I ordered one. Have not gotten it yet and it will be even longer before I am ready to install it but it is on order.

In general: I have had open and closed burner gas tops and closed are 100% easier to clean, I would never never get open unless I had daily cleaning help. The BTU rating on the highest burner is important, as well as a very small BTU simmer burner. I also need continuous grate to slide a pot over, and prefer mechanical knobs to electronic keypads. There are some cooktops where the grates are too high off the burners and there are complaints of a feeling of under-powered burners despite the BTU rating. I think this whole open burner for the home thing is nothing short of ridiculous, it is more of a high volume restaurant issue, but his is gardenweb... I do not like the performance of gas ovens. I like electric and I love the functionality of convection. I would never buy an oven without convection. So I would vote for closed burner gas cooking and electric ovens.

I love our 48" Viking. There is plenty of room when dh and I are cooking at the same time and the extra space also comes in handy when I'm cooking alone. I love having unused burners to slide hot pots onto for cooling off or as landing space for hot items from the oven. It contains all the hot items to one space instead having them scattered across the counter on trivets. And there are times when all of our burners are used at once (we have 6 + a griddle.) I use the small oven most of the time for our family of 4. The large oven is handy when I cook mulitiple items at the same temp or when I use large cookie sheets. Having 2 ovens comes in handy for different oven temps and for when one oven is tied up by something baking for an hour that shouldn't be disturbed. Take your favorite baking dishes to the showroom to make sure they fit into the small oven. The dishes I brought were a 9" Pyrex pie pan and a 9x13 pan. They fit fine in our Viking but didn't in some other brands. The brand I was leaning toward got eliminated because the oven rack brackets decreased the usable space so much that I couldn't fit either of the 2 dishes I brought. Just reading the oven specs wouldn't have been good enough since it seemed the oven was plenty big. Dh was happy we ended up with his top choice by default. I would definitely buy another 48" range if I had to do over again. Getting a range with 2 ovens and plenty of burner/elbow space was a splurge that made a lot of sense to us.