After having such a horrible experience with the Kenmore electric range, I am afraid to try Kenmore again. Still have some extended warrranty left which will transfer to the Samsung. I have had great luck with my other Samsung appliances, so I hope I do with the range also. My husband laughed at me when I told him that the appearance of the Kenmore just left me cold, but when he saw it, he felt the same way. Blah. Can't put my finger on why. gscience chick, after baking I usually leave my oven door cracked open in the winter anyway for the heat boost to the kitchen. My son uses Circulon Infinite pans on his induction and really likes them. (Interesting to get cooking advice from my son!) In browsing the net, Circulon has a 25% off sale this month as well as deep discounts on the Infinite (looks like Symmetry will be replacing it). I found an 11 inch skillet for roughly $18 and a twin pack 10 and 12 skillet for $36 (Symmetry), etc. Then on the potsandpans.com website I was able to find the 3qt saucepan for a really good price. I have a few pots and pans that I can use from before (I hope). Two of them have 8 3/4" bases - hope I can use them . . . I love my Calphalon Contemporary saucepans and hate to lose them, but I see that they are coming out with a Contemporary IH line (induction friendly) - in Australia, but not here yet. Maybe soon . . .? Guess my life is kind of dull when I can get so excited about a new range! Any hints and suggestions will be appreciated!

I don't know about the 5F. The condition you describe sounds just like what happens when the Range is "Locked." On the extreme left of the control panel is a "Lock" Icon with a 3 in it. Is it possible that someone rested their hand on that for 3 seconds? Unlocking the Control Panel & the oven door requires pressing that Icon for 3 seconds also. Good Luck. I have had mine for two & a half years now with no problems. I frequently lock mine when not in use. Even though my two cats "know" not to get up there, they might "forget" when I'm not around. Another safe guard would be to not leave any pans or kettles on the surface when not in use. This way, even if a surface unit was accidentally turned on, nothing would happen. It actually wouldn't even go On with nothing there.

Now that I've opened the control panel and properly connected the control cable for the oven, it works much better. The only continuing downside that I haven't fixed is the buzzing / rattle from the rear panel when the oven warms while the convection fan is on. I still despise the stupid blue clock. I wish the clock itself could just be turned off. My cats like it, oddly enough. I can tell because there are always cat prints on the surface. One day they'll learn. You betcha. The bottle of surface cleaner that comes with the stove is hard to remove. I've read somewhere here that there's a different product available that's much easier to work with. I can't remember which thread it was in or the name of the product, though. I've accrued one scratch on the cooktop surface. I noticed that the surface cleaner helps to keep the surface slick. The surface is always slick enough that I have to hold my pots and pans in place while stirring. Either it wasn't slick enough to avoid the scratch or I wasn't holding the cookware still enough. I guess it was bound to happen, though. Overall I still love it. So much easier to keep clean. The speed that it generates heat is great. I kind of like the buzzing sound it makes because I can just hear how high the power level is set without looking. (It's rather odd that the power levels go in weird numerical steps.) If you can get it on sale, go for it. It's definitely made by Electrolux, keeping the Kenmore tradition alive. (The tradition being that Kenmore isn't really a brand so much as a generic reseller.) I'm curious to see how it holds up over the years.

stir-fryi -- Good question. Similar thoughts have occurred to me, as well, especially with the newest Kenmore/Electrolux freestanding induction range (with knob burner controls) being briefly down around $1300/$1400 over Labor Day and the Kenmore Elite slide-in (also made for Sears by Elux) now being down to $2264. While slide-ins are always priced well above the corresponding free-standing versions, Samsung's initial suggested retail price was absurd. Lowe's is still asking way too much for the Samsung but AJ Madison (as Lt.islander points out) is presently asking $2500 for it. That's only about $50 more than what AJ Madison is asking for the GE Slide-in Induction (PHS920). So, for those in the market for an induction slide-in, why indeed not consider the Kenmore Elite slide-in? As with everything, every choice has tradeoffs. The Samsung has a larger usable cooktop surface and a distinctly larger oven which can be split into two separate convection compartments. Also has a knob interface for burner controls which really appeals to some. Maybe not worth an extra $2k to most of us, but maybe enough to persuade some to spend the additional $250 that the Samsung costs at AJM versus the Kenmore Elite. On the other hand, as fauguy noted above, the Samsung owner's manual indicates that the range has only 10 steps for burner heat settings. The Kenmore Elite has half step settings from #3 to # 9 (plus boost) and increments of .2 at the low end between 1 and 2.8 where finer adjustments seem useful. Judging from user comments, some of the Kenmores have failed after a few years and left some buyers pretty ticked at the company's inabiity to fix the ranges. Samsung has had its share of similar posting for its free-standing induction ranges. In both cases, though, not a very large number of postings good and bad. How Samsung will do with the newest model remains to be seen. That's the long answer. The short answer is that somebody must be buying those Sears induction ranges but they don't seem to be posting here in the appliances forum at gardenweb. This post was edited by JWVideo on Thu, Sep 11, 14 at 12:35