Good points, Edwin. Thanks.

That was going to be my next question- cast iron on top of a smoothtop.
A couple of birds in the house means we can't use teflon but i
wholeheartedly feel that cast iron is the way to go anyways. (Teflon is
horrible for all kinds of reasons, and cast iron is *good* for all
kinds of reasons).

Something else to note, is that my roommates have a bunch of (cheap,
probably) stainless steel saucepans that have all gotten warped by the
smoothtop- if you turn the pan upside down and look at it, they all
have a high spot in the center of the bottom. I think it's the
heatup/cooldown pulsing that does this. Probably wouldn't be a big
deal normally, but since the top *is* smooth these pans now jiggle all
over the place when you try to heat something up. You almost have to
stand there and hold onto it, and it doesn't ever get the full 'contact
patch' that a (normal) flat pan bottom would. There goes any
efficiency. True that the pans are cheap, but heat is heat and metal
is metal, and so I bet there is no guarantee that soemthing like this
won't warp the **** out of my nice high-dollar pans just as bad as the
$12 set.

Goedjn says:
Exactly. The person who USES the equipment gets to choose it.

You have a point there, but it's also all about getting along ;-)
FWIW she looks at cooking as a necessity, I'm the one that wants to
make a hobby out of it. We'll both cook, but I would venture to guess
that I will cook *more*.

The stove thing is actually not as big of a deal (between us) as I've
made it out to be. It's more one of I want gas because that's what I
prefer, she wants what is most efficient and environmentally friendly
be it gas or electric. (we'll talk about solar ovens another day).