Firstly, there is nothing wrong with using emissives, provided they are used correctly. The biggest issue people have with them is that they are often in assets as small high intensity objects to simulate light bulbs. These end up being firefly generators as much as lighting the scene. I regularly use emissive spheres to light a scene, however they tend to be fairly large and with low intensity.
When you are lighting a scene, every light placed in the scene should have a direct result. To get a scene to render quickly you are always better with less rather than more lights. The scene is simpler and it takes less time per iteration and as there are not multiple light sources lighting each surface, it will require less iterations to converge.
With your modest hardware, I would suggest that you light scenes using HDRI's only. Interior scenes can be done via the use of the iRay Interior camera I mentioned earlier. The advantage of the HDRI is that not only do they render very rapidly, but you can also achieve colour variation all with one source. To show you an example of what is possible, please see the spoiler below.
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