go with 1.62
it is certainly easier to set up than 1.61 (additionally, I found the 1.61 --> 1.62 conversion a little tedious and painful)
also, 1.62 has some features that, if they existed in 1.61, I never knew it... execution of pre-launch and post-launch applications, for instance. In 1.61, if I needed something to run before or after my emulator, I had to stick it all in a batch file, which got ugly and didn't always work as expected. With apps like AutoHotKey, I can easily launch scripts to catch and translate keypresses, etc... and the pre-execution launch makes this a breeze.