Look at using a Genymotion emulator with Oracle's VirtualBox. I am using a Samsung netbook with this combination to execute Android programs from eclipse. The emulator takes about 20 seconds to start.
One problem I occasionally have is with the adb program. I have a batch file the kills and restarts the adb program. Running that batch file several times usually clears the problem. The batch file:
@rem kill/start server
Set ADBPath=D:\AndroidDevelopment\adt-bundle-windows-x86-20130522\sdk\platform-tools\
@REM set ADB_TRACE=1
%ADBPath%adb devices
%AdBPath%adb.exe kill-server
%AdBPath%adb start-server
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