Beer and mead

Hi all,
I´ve just started fermenting stuff, and have just done my second mead. I live in Brasil, and all breweing equipment I could get is beer´s. The vessesls are all right, but I had to use unproper yeast.
They are going great though, it just takes a lot of time.
But now I´m curious about beer breweing (our comercial beer is either **** or very expensive). I can get many good beer yeasts, malts. Just didn´t have the courage yet.
So I have a couple of questions to get an general impression.
Is beer breweing harder then mead brewing?
Does everyone´s first beer taste bad? Or is it possible to make an OK beer only with care, but 0 experience?
Does it require more atention (mead you can really just leave there and check rarely) and constant care?
Is Stout and wheat beer harder to brew then the thinner ales?
Is PH testing important in beermaking?
Is using any spring water fine, or should you look for specific waters?

And any other relevant advice you would give beginers

I'm not the most experienced, but I'd say extract beer is just as easy as making cake out of a box. Doing All Grain is beyond my experience and equipment, but its not "hard," there are just more steps.

My first, second, and third beers all turned out really well.

I usually check on mine once a week. The less you look at it, the less you worry about having done something wrong/infection.

My very first beer was an extract Stout. It was very easy to do, and came out very well.

I don't think pH or water chemistry matters "as" much for extract as it does for All Grain; certainly not as much as mead. I haven't ever bothered to check pH or hardness or anything for extract beers, and they all came out fine.