Peppers don't necessarily take all that long to germinate if you use degassed water. Using degassed water, I get lots of pepper seed to germinate in 5 to 7 days. (Of course, using the same degassed water, I'll likely get some tomato seeds just starting to sprout in 3 to 5 days.) I'm talking here about pre-sprouting in moist coffee filter paper, not in potting mix, where you don't know germination has occurred until it's well on its way. I count germination as having occurred the moment I see the first little taproot coming out of the seed.
The well-domesticated peppers are generally always quicker to germinate than most of the semi-wild varieties, i.e. habaneros, bhuts, etc.
The only possibly significant difference between sweet peppers and hot peppers that I know of, my general impression is most sweet peppers can't handle the cool weather of spring as well as the hot peppers. So I would seriously consider planting out my sweet peppers a week LATER than my tomatoes. Then again, I've never had much good experience with sweet peppers, so I really can't say. As another gross generality, sweet peppers just generally seem to want to be babied along a lot more than hot peppers generally do.
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