Now that they have moved to Froyo this might be a better alternative to develop/test apps on as opposed to the extremely slow emulator. Hopefully there is a VBox/Vmware compatible image available.
I tried it in a VirtualBox. Runs smoother than the emulator from the Android Development Kit, but still a bit sluggish. I'll give it another try on my netbook.
This might be useful: a cycle-accurate ARM->x86 JIT, made for the Desmume emulator: <a href="http://akuvian.org/src/desmume_jit.diff" rel="nofollow">http://akuvian.org/src/desmume_jit.diff</a><p>Since Android doesn't need the same absurd level of cycle-accuracy (the DS basically relies on it for synchronization), it'll be even faster there.
I just downloaded the generic nightly iso and installed it with VirtualBox. It seems to work well. The keyboard shortcuts where a bit of trial and error, but I determined that the "Home" key is what you'd expect. The escape key is back. "End" key is the power switch. Overall seems to work pretty well. Just need to figure out how to get the market installed and test out USB debugging.