Home, home on the range ...

I grew up with a magnificent Anderson range that wasn't just older than me - it's as old as my Mom. Several tons of white and black enamel over cast iron, oven that lights with a match, 36" wide with a separate broiler and griddle and soup well on the side - but it cooked and baked like a dream (still does, in fact, but it's my mother's, not mine). My grandmother's last Caloric outlasted her, dying after 40+ years of hard and graceful service.

So my main experience (apart from crappy stoves in rentals, which don't count) is with quality old fashioned ranges: turn the knob and the gas comes on, set the oven by squinting at the little lines on the bakelite dial. And I love to cook and bake.

 Fast-forward to the 21st century appliance showroom. My only choices seem to be -

1) computerized monstrosities, with oven controls on the backsplash so that you have to reach across the hot stove (whose idea was that?), and a button labeled "chicken nuggets", or

2) heavy, clunky, industrial-looking "pro style" ranges in hard-to-clean stainless steel.

I can't figure out which features I'm supposed to want.

What's with the simmer burner? Can't you just turn the burner down really low on a new stove, the way we do on our old Andersen? "Sealed burners" seem like a nice idea - I've never had them before, is there any downside?

And then there's the mystery of convection. I thought I remembered, from high school physics, that convection was the way all ovens cooked - hotter air displaces cooler air and it all flows around in a circle, by nature. But in the new-stove context, "convection" seems to mean that there's a fan - with or without a heating element - to help things bake more evenly, or faster, or both. I'm used to an oven that bakes evenly all on its own, and I don't understand how "faster" works, short of turning up the temperature. (And while we're at it, how do self-cleaning ovens work?)

I suppose the electronics are inevitable - they don't still make ranges with pilot lights, do they? (Too bad - I'm used to using the pilot light area of the stove top to keep things lukewarm - to soften butter, to hold a savory tart that I'm snacking on so that it doesn't get too cold). But I also read that the electronics are the first (and second, and third, and fifth ..) thing to break down.

I guess I'm drifting toward the "pro-style" side of the room - though the trouble there is that I (peace to you that differ) think that stainless steel is ugly as well as impractical; I'd far prefer a nice white enamel. And it's galling to think of paying so very, very much for a stove, when even that seems to be a compromise.

Where is the stove for me?