We are building a house too - it won't be completed until January of 2010. It has not been started yet. We were going to go with a 30" gas slide-in range and suddenly my wife tells me about induction cooktop. Oh well! Now we are going to change. Is it worth it to change from gas to induction? We are in Florida and she says gas is going to heat up the whole kitchen. I am still concerned about the reliability, etc. I am a GE employee - so I get discounts - but still! We are planning on getting the monogram 36". There are two models - one has glass edges and another one has stainless steel edges (more expensive). I actually like the glass edges. Is one better than the other or is it just looks? GE installation instructions are confusing - in one place they say 12" of space is needed below the cooktop for air flow for electronics ventilation - but then they say an oven can be installed below! We are still debating whether to put an oven below or put it in a separate cabinet

When I asked GE for a oven/induction compatibility list for both the Monogram and Profile lines, they simply replied that all of their non-Trivection ovens were fine. At least one other person here asked the same question and was given an actual listing. I don't know if there were any particular exclusions in that list. If it were me, I would want to have correspondence from GE addressed to "me", assuring me that my proposed setup was ok.

Thanks for the response. I understand that you have to have 4" clearance between the two but where the clearance is measured from is what we are unsure of. I don't have the oven yet, so if it's square that question won't matter it will be the same. I'm trying to measure the front of the cabinet where we can't seem to get 4" with a standard cabinet. He is telling me we have a 4" toekick + a 3/4" base + a 28" cutout from the ground up which does not leave 4" to the top of the countertop. He is thinking once installed we would have 4" in between them inside the cabinet if we only have 3 1/4" on the face of the cabinet. I'm thinking the only option is to lower the cabinet base to level with the toekick instead of on top of it. That will give us an extra 3/4 that we need. But that means no overhang on that cabinet. He isn't sure how that will look and wanted me to try and find a picture. If you can, could you see if your oven is sitting on top of the cabinet base that is level with the bottom of all the other cabinets or is sitting lower then the other cabinet bases? Thank you.

Haley, I did end up buying the GE Café Induction cooktop just last year when the only feedback I found was this very thread. Since there wasn’t much data then, I based my decision on my last experience with GE and former cooktop. I LOVE THIS COOKTOP! I didn’t care for the layout of most others nor the fact that many of them used shared controllers for all burners which I still don’t get - when I’m bustling around the kitchen, I don’t want to be fumbling though the controls to quickly tend to a burner. I find the layout to be most efficient and useful for my needs. I like each burner has its own control. The slide controls are pretty slick although, not gonna lie, with a wet finger, the slider doesn’t completely respond but luckily there are the manual up/down buttons that do work. It brings water to a boil in about a minute. It has the two bridging burners for my cast iron griddle purposes. I find I don’t use it as much since the middle section does not heat up (where it did on my last GE cooktop which was not induction). However, Rudi does make a good point – it’s nice to have cooler zones.) The cooktop does come with a stainless steel clad aluminum griddle which does work pretty well on the bridge. The cooktop is easy to clean (I use a little Bon Ami or Bar Keepers to light scrub only when necessary) and looks beautiful. It doesn’t take much to make her sparkle! I have no scratches to speak of (outside of those caused by the tile samples a dear loved one set on top and shuffled around, which made me want to cry…) It can be noisier than standard cooktops at times but if I recall from my research last year, that’s induction (period). I do like the timer function. At first I thought it was such a silly feature when my oven timer was right there. Let me tell you I now use the built-in timer ALL. THE. TIME. We won’t discuss that I’m just now realizing it can be set for each burner! I’ll have to try that. I’m still not sure what the variances between the Monogram and Café are worth the dollar difference. Sure, the color of the Monogram is cool but that alone is not worth the price difference in my opinion. I spend a lot of time in my kitchen and this is definitely my favorite thing! It’s also one of the most expensive items in my kitchen but completely worth every penny to me.