I just don't get all these posts about induction having a learning curve. Took me about 5 minutes to figure it out. I will conceed the touch pad point -- I know some people don't like them (even younger people). But the controls are not hard to use. Instead of a dial with low, med, high and several notches between, you have a numbered 1-10 system. No biggie. I think a senior (or anyone) interested enough in induction to consider buying it is also intelligent enough to understand why their old pots won't work. Sheesh -- you don't have a very high opinion of seniors' intelligence do you Antss. If you're in the KB industry, it might behoove you to drop some of your stereotypical ideas. Seniors don't all live in poverty and in many cases have much more spending power than younger people. Seems like your attitudes could turn away a lot of good customers. I don't mean to sound **tchy. But your comments are really kind of appalling.

hard drive failure... I might want to look in bios and try to assertain if the hard drive parameters are set correctly or maybe set it to automatic detect. If that's not it, probably open the case and unplug the cables to the hard drive and reinsert them, both on the hard drive and the motherboard. Something to start with anyhow. Could be something as simple as the time is set incorrectly or the cmos battery on the motherboard is old and needs replacing.

This is a case where marginal to no ventilation meets the performance requirement (until someone else has to cope with the result of more aggressive cooking). High recirculating hoods and pop-up downdraft vents meet that standard. In this case, the existing vent appears to be a mere slot in the cooktop, basically useless for capture and containment. A separate pop-up downdraft vent appears to be difficult to install because of the short distance between the cooktop and the riser. Pop-ups at the sides of the cooktop would be too confining. Another possibility is modifying the riser itself with a grill connected to some part of the existing vent ducting. Modifying the riser, if structurally possible, would likely be a big deal, granite wise. It might be necessary to remove all of the granite and have it revised where the proper tooling is available. If this is quartzite or one of the methylmethacrylate based composites like Corian, then in-situ fabrication is feasible. At this point both the material of the countertop and the size of the existing cooktop cutout need to be defined. If the countertop is granite, I would lean toward the high recirculating approach, for which I believe both Broan and Vent-a-Hood have configurations. This assumes that the code being enforced doesn't require external venting. If so, then the long duct to the wall approach seems to be required unless an acceptable second floor pass-through is feasible. kas

Thank you everyone so much for making suggestions! My mom has the links to these threads now (one in kitchens and one in appliances) and is following along. She has jury duty this week and her soccer team just had an inglorious end to their season, so all your kind help is a bright spot in an otherwise lackluster week. :) @multiple people who suggested recirculating ventilation How exactly does recirculating work? You have a hood, but it's just...not vented? So it's just like a fan? @westsider Your "Way better everything" line made my mom laugh. I totally agree that she will completely prefer induction in every way (although her current cooktop is not setting the bar particularly high...). @fishcow Ha! Ohhhh I have been there. I hope you never ever have to do those things you are avoiding! We are definitely going to look into the least deep cooktop possible, inspired by your suggstion. I may start a different thread just asking for the least deep cooktop anybody can find or already knows of. Surely there's some people with old/historic homes with non-standard counter depth who have looked for that too. @rebunky https://publishers.playbuzz.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/pb-wink.gif @practigal It's a cabinet underneath. Just posted pictures and dimensions! @cpartist My mom also laughed (twice -- both times she read the thread) at "Your parents absolutely need induction." Like me, she was very interested in the in-ceiling vent you posted, and she she sent it to her contractor to see what he thought. Do you have any experience with something like that? Does it work at all?