Have you been to the appliance forum? You will get an earful over there. Sorry, no Viking experience here, we went with Capital after all of the praise.

Our Viking range is older, and we bought it used off of craisglist. So this may not apply to a new range...

First of all, it is a better range than any I have owned before; it is the first professional range we have had though. I Love having six burners and a larger oven. I like that all the burners are the same, because we use a four burner griddle often (we have a large family).

Things that could be better:
The flame spread is fairly large, so really small pots don't work as well. Has that been changed on new vikings?
The racks don't slide easily in the oven, so it is hard to rearrange their position. I am fairly sure that newer viking ranges have better racks.

If I could have purchased a new range, I was leaning toward Wolf. American Range sounded good too, but no one sold them in my area.

Ain

I posted on your previous thread
Yes LOVE my 36" AG open burner Viking

Best to you

I have a cobalt blue 36" all gas closed burner Viking. I must say I primarily chose it for looks. However, I have been very pleased with it. I haven't noticed the issue of small pots not working well. I have had it for a year now, with no problems.

If I were to do it again, I would consider the induction, more for ease of cleaning than anything else. We have a hot water dispenser, so when I am boiling water for pasta, I start with it nearly boiling before I even put the pot on the stove.

We also have a single 27" electric wall oven which we use for most of our baking. I like that a lot, too.

We have a 36" open burner range top and separate double wall ovens...all Viking. I have been using them now for about 2 months and have been very happy. Cleaning the open burners isn't a big deal at all and yes, the flame spread is a bit large but I don't often use small pots (just gro greek / turkish coffee).
The simmer is quite hot but I have found that low is fine and in future I may look into a simer plate.

I have the Viking 36" gas cooktop (not range) and I love it. I did notice the flame spread, but not having had gas before, I'm not sure how other brands are. The small pots still cook well.

I love the look. The cast iron grates are a bit heavy and take awhile to cool down, but I like that they are continuous/all one level, so that it's easy to move pots around (getting that griddle for the top is on my list of things to do).

Haven't had any problems at all with it. I was a bit worried due to so many people on Gardenweb not liking it. So I'm glad to see others posting here.

We put in a 48" gas Viking in our old house in 2000. Loved it so very much. It had 6 burners and a griddle, which we rarely used. If I had little kids, I'd probably have used it a lot for grilled cheese and pancakes. I thought the 6 burners were great, however. In the new house, there was only room when we remodeled for a 36". I found a Viking that was a demonstrator with 6 burners, dual fuel. I really like having a self-cleaning oven (the old one wasn't) and 6 burners are the best. This stove has a closed burner system, although I liked the open burners on the old stove better. The flame is a little large, but we rarely use little pots. I absolutely LOVE the way these Vikings cook. My husband and I are both avid cooks, and this stove is the best! I do miss the small oven next to the big oven on the old stove, and I knew I would. I wish I would have found space for a wall oven somewhere in our plan.

We've had our all gas Viking for 4 1/2 years now. We use LP and lost some btu in the conversion from gas. Even so, I'm really pleased with the speed in which large kettles of water heat up. We have the same problem with small pots as others have mentioned above. If flames are licking up the outside, we turn the heat down until it looks just right. I've also found that the simmer isn't quite as low as I expected but it hasn't caused a problem The ignitors on some of the burners are finicky at times. If I can't get a burner to light I use a match. We have a griddle on our 48" range but I don't use it often. It takes a long time to heat up since it's such a big slab of metal. But overall, I've been happy with our choice. I really like having a range without a lot of electrical parts that can break.

We chose Viking for several reasons:
1. It was sold locally which made me feel more confident about getting repair service, if needed.
2. It was less $ than other brands I was considering.
3. The size of the small oven accommodated my most-used baking/pie pans---this wasn't true of one of the other front runners.
4. DH wanted a black range and the other brands we were considering didn't come in black at the time.

I had 36 in Viking in old house (4 burners , griddle in the middle). Absolutely loved it. In new house I was going to get 36 in 6 burner w/ the 24 in companion griddle(we have many children and use the griddle all the time).
As luck would have budget issues required we move our old range. So now we have that, we did convert to LP. This summer we will buy what was intended. I love Viking , have had no problems whatsoever. Even in moving & the conversion everything has worked perfectly.