If syncing your Bitcoin client is taking too long for your liking you may be better off using a Bitcoin client that uses the SPV protocol. These clients do not require you to maintain a full copy of the blockchain - they sync almost immediately.
Have a look here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=37.0Two popular SPV clients are Electrum and Multibit.
One thing to note with SPV clients is that you need to trust the nodes your client is connecting to more than with Bitcoin Core. Its possible for nodes to "hold back" transactions and not tell you about them. They cannot fake transactions, only not tell you about them. The newer versions of Electrum connect to more than 1 node which mitigates this risk as all of the nodes would have to "hold back" the same transaction as well.