Okie Dokie...here's a cookware primer for you.
From Best to Worst, according to heat conduction ability, there is:
1)copper
2)aluminum
3)cast iron
4)stainless steel
Stainless steel would be a little farther up the list, but to get a stainless steel pan in a thick-enough surface for that even heating, it would be cost prohibitive and WAY TOO HEAVY.
You cannot really successfully cook on a copper pan because it reacts with food, changing the taste. Many manufacturers then combine copper with stainless steel, which is expensive and beautiful, and difficult to clean because of oxidation on the copper.
The problems above generally leave you with your next best choice, aluminum.
Aluminum is the best available conductor of heat and is available from most cookware companies. Calphalon has several different pans, for which they start with a thick aluminum disk, heat it, and spin it onto a form, which makes your pan. Other companies will heat aluminum even higher, pouring it into a pressed mold for your pan. Spun aluminum has a slight advantage over a pressed mold pan due to the naturally pourous nature of a molded pan. Why does this matter?
WELLL....when you heat that pan, the aluminum expands...and if a pan is spun as opposed to being poured and pressed, it's going to stick less often.
Americans are constantly guilty of cranking up the heat on their stoves to cook things faster, and then they THROW the food on before heating the pan...wherein the metal expands, and the food STICKS.
So the answer for many companies is an aluminum pan with a teflon surface..which will fail to metal utensils. Scanpan, a Danish company, (for sale on
Amazon here introduced a product called Greblon, which is nearly impervious to metal utensils therefore lasts a bit longer than teflon. However, Scanpans are expensive, and Scan does not have the selection available that Calphalon has.
Calphalon has two different weights available in their most popular spun pans, giving you a choice to prevent warping for heavy-use cooking.
How does a pan warp? Cold shock. After you're done cooking in a pan, you need to let it cool to a bit warmer than room temperature before running water on it.
I have several different pans in my kitchen and generally choose open stock from different companies. I have a stockpot available from Calphalon (
photo'd here, on Amazon that is a stainless steel over aluminum, which is pretty good. You can usually find that pan at Linens-n-Things or Bed Bath and Beyond for under $50. My Pampered Chef Professional pan (the two-burner griddle) warped after about 2 years of use. My standard Pampered Chef pans have lasted, but they were never great conductors of heat because they just weren't heavy enough. They also lose their surface after about 5 years. My Scanpan lasted about 8 years before it started sticking.
I think my favorite pan of all is this one, available on Amazon for under $25...it is
here
Another good pan, available for under $25 is one I use from Amazon for cooking eggs, etc. and is available
here
A few words about LeCreuset. First, though LeCreuset has been around for dozens and dozens of years, we could never count on the company to have the products available we needed to sell. LeCreuset is a porcelein-over-cast iron product, which is beautiful, but is certainly not the best heat conductor. It's great if you need to cook a stew or something similar for all day...but if you're frying an egg, beware of hot spots (or really hot places and not so-hot places) on your pans.
So my answer to your question is...I think the best choice is a little different item from every company. If you still have lingering questions, PM me. I sold these products for years and years and am always looking around for the next great pan!
He is in the process of redoing the kitchen and is putting in a professional stove-it cooks at a much higher temp-I will be interested to see if they cook differently. Honestly, my favorite pan is a 13x9x2 cake pan that is old and cheap and makes the best cakes ever! Go figure!
And then, maybe, I could convince him to cook more. 
(Actually, DH taught me pretty much everything I know about cooking, so far.)
