It has been almost six years since my last post and I never posted back with what we ended up buying.
We ended up going with a Frigidaire Gallery glass-top convection oven. Our house was built back around 1950 and was originally built with a 220v outlet for an electric stove. When we moved in back in the early 90's we switched over to propane. Upon looking at the plug and wiring I decided to install new wiring and plug. That was an epic journey in itself, but I got it done thankfully with no major surgery done to the house nor myself.<g>
The stove has worked wonderfully since we installed it, with only learning-curve hiccups along the way, no equipment issues at all. My wife loves the stove and it is indeed much easier to clean than coil-type electric or open-burner gas stoves. Though, with burned on food it still takes some elbow grease to remove it. There is no removing coils, grates, or pans nor lifting of stove top for cleaning...any boil over or spills are contained on the top of the stove. But, again, it does sometime require elbow grease to clean. Overall, very satisfied with the cleaning aspect of it.
One thing that I don't particularly care for, and I figured I wouldn't, is the retained heat within the stove top once the burner is turned off. If you need to turn the heat off to a pan/pot of food then you probably should remove that vessel from that stove eye as it will continue to cook for a minute or so more....and stay hot for longer than that. Naturally with gas that burner would cooled down much quicker...even a coil-type electric will/should cool down much quicker than the glass top. I figured on this before we bought it...but, I still don't like that issue. Overall, though, we are very pleased with the stove. The oven works great!
After six years the glass top does have some scratches and a few "stains" (looks like watermarks) here and there. The scratches are probably from using pots and pans not designed specifically for glass-topped stoves. We've never specifically bought pans for this stove. (I know, we were supposed to have already done that!

). So, we're at the stage where we need to buy three or four pots and pans. We are on a limited budget, maybe not a ramen noddle budget, but nowhere close to a Russian caviar budget, so we need something decent but not piggy-bank busting priced. Anybody got some suggestions for flat-bottomed (non-stick is good!

) pots and pans that will leave us some money to buy food to cook in them?
Anyhow, I just wanted to update the thread with what we ended up with and pose a question about some affordable cookware.
Thanks for all the feedback! (even if I'm six years late in saying so!!!!
)
Ed