Arrgh. Emacs on the terminal is a joy, and is present on more servers than you think (dreamhost for instance).

Having said that I default to 'vi foo.txt' on the command line and feel like vi competency is a core server skill ...

If you haven't used TRAMP to view and edit files on other servers from your local emacs session, you should give it a try.

TRAMP's nifty, but it used to lock up emacs on shaky connections. Maybe it's better now?

I'm particularly fond of Nano. :)