ORIGINAL: acarter
Nitro really won't give you longer flight times if you get good batteries. But Nitro will give you more even flight, as far as power. A electric plane will get weaker and weaker as the flight goes on. Where a glow plane will stay the same the whole flight.
Unless you only plan on getting a park flyer (maybe ready to fly), an electric plane isn't going to be any simpler than a glow. Actually I think that electrics are more complicated. You have everything a glow plane has (servos reciever, battery,), and then some (speed control, motor wires). The only real advantage as far as simplicity for electric is that you dont' have to deal with the motor not running. But with electric you have to deal with charging batteries and waiting for them to charge.
Austin
I find electrics simpler to build and set up.
There is no throttle servo or throttle linkage. No servo travel endpoints to carefully match to the engine's throttle.
There's no fuel tank or fuel lines to worry about.
Nothing has to be fuel proofed.
The motor battery can be anywhere it needs to be to balance the plane.
Did I remember to charge the RX battery? Oh wait! I don't have one! The ESC's battery eliminator circuit powers the RX.
RX on/off switch is optional, just plug the motor battery in and the RX comes on.
Wrapping the RX in foam is unnessesary. Just stick it somewhere with servo tape.
If there is any complication, it's that most ARFs are set up for glow and have to be adapted to electric, but there are a lot of exellent electric specific ARFs in the stores now.
Get three batteries and a couple of chargers and you can do a flight so often that they might accuse you of being a channel hog at the field.