tetonper, I have a DSG 6500 with the 6 spd. manual. I'm a newbie compared to most of the guys on this forum but I LOVE my little tractor! To my mind the 6 spd is more rugged. A lot depends on what you use it for. Is your property hilly or flat? Do you use a lot of ground engaging implements or mostly just mowing? Hilly and ground engaging I would go with the manual. Hydro's tend to die on the hills. Relatively flat and just mowing the hydro should be fine. Regardless, if you get the hydro don't believe the "no maintainence required" propaganda. If I had purchased a more expensive tractor like a JD or Kubota I would not be as worried about the hydro but with Craftsman I needed to be as bullet proof as I could. I have a sleeve hitch and a moldboard plow, a JBJr on the front and multiple other attachments so mowing is only a small part of the jobs I do with my tractor. Have fun in your search! There are also some good used deals out there if you know what you are doing. I didn't when I bought so I went new.

Rather than take my word that I have no trouble using old-fashioned (aka "manual") ice trays in a bottom freezer how abouyt you take a bottle of waterr and an ice tray to store and check it out for yourself?

How deep is this oven? That determines how deep (i.e., far away from the cooktop) your downdraft thingy has to be. And that may be the pragmatic problem with this plan. If you're able to do this, you may discover that the oven pushes your downdraft so far away from the cooktop that it doesn't do any good to turn it on. That's not good.

I have a 36" RCS and it is plenty powerful enough! The cooking you do sounds like what we do and you will be turning down the power I promise. I really wanted the RNB but cost made us go with the RCS. I thought it was a mistake and was quite disappointed thinking for $2k it didn't make sense to not go for the extra power (and the few other nicer options on the RNB). I'm not sure what I'd do with more power. Heresy in this day and age of more more more power, but it's true for me and what we cook. Stir frys are great, fish and chicken sear beautifully, and dh and I don't use full heat b/c it's too much. Other than heating up water, and stir frys, we rarely use full heat for very long. As for the oven, we make homemade pizzas about once a week and they come out beautifully. We cook them at 500F on a pizza stone. The heat is nice and consistent throughout, no hot or cold spots. I've made bread, cookies, baked fish and chicken and lots of other things, all coming out perfectly. I believe the fit and finish of the CC is nicer than the BS (RCS not RNB). But the newer RCS might be a better finish, I haven't seen the newest version in person. You will love either range. I am very very happy with the RCS, and many people on here love their CC's and their RCS's and RNB's.