I just found out about the snapshot feature of the Android emulator. From the AVD manager you click "Edit..." for an existing AVD. Then you check the box "Enabled" under Snapshot. When you start the AVD you now have the option to "Launch from snapshot", which if one exists, will save you the pain of waiting for the device to boot. Of course, on the first attempt there will be no snapshot so you will also want to check "Save to snapshot" to create a snapshot when you exit the AVD. You can uncheck this after the first time if you no longer need to save the state.
This one feature makes the emulator much less painful to work with.