I'll sadly admit that for most quick file editing I still use pico/nano (which is installed on most every system that I've touched in the past 3-5 years). I used emacs around 1998, but at the time it was too big I felt and had too much power. vi was just damn confusing. When I saw people using it, it looked amazing, but I could just never get the handle on it.

When I'm editing big files/coding I use Cyberduck to SSH/SCP files over to TextMate, which works well most of the time. The only time it doesn't work is when I need to sudo edit that file, because Cyberduck can't sudo.