Ethereum: easy -- doesn't work, is dependent on Vitalik Buterin and his latest brainfarts (not the idea of decentralization), is teaming up with the Banksters now, and -- above all -- is a good thing to stay out of because of possible replays of the DAO problem. Far too unsafe to put any serious amount of money into!
Dapps, on the other hand and in general and -- excluding the easily attackable/hence unmanageable DAOs -- , can be used to build really helpful and interesting solutions and an entire decentralized internet! (We urgently need internet re-decentralization after what corporations (AOL, Microsoft, Google, Facebook) and governments (GCHQ, NSA & friends) have done to our original internet!
Smart contracts: won't work and will make our world very unpelasant -- think User Terms & Conditions on steroids. Thank you, but no thank you. Once we have them, we'll see how smart today's dumb lawyers really were...
RE: Learning About Ethereum- Dapps and Smart Contracts