Now that you know that you want to stay on road for now, you have to decide electric or nitro. electric is easyer but you have the pain of chargeing the batteries. Nitro is harder to tune, it's smelly , dirty and noisy (thats why I love it!!)

Electrics have shorter run times because when a battery pack is dead, you have to stop and wait around for it to recharge.
As for nitro, you could run it for days, you can just top off the tank when it gets low.

Stay away from the RTR and build it yourself, or you will be clueless when repairing or disasembleing,

Look out for the cheeper "no name brands" on ebay, there's no replacement parts available, and there a waist of money (cuz you can't fix them) What ever brand you get make sure there's parts available for them. If you have a hobby shop near you, take a walk through and see what brands have the most parts avaliable