To clarify, I don't have a problem editing remote files - I use TRAMP right now (haven't tried sshfs, but it looks interesting thanks!).

The problem I'm trying to solve is that right now I need to install Emacs on any computer I want to do work on. I'd like to be able to jump onto a random friend's laptop and open Emacs without any setup cost.

I like sshfs as well, but it seems to perform even slower than scp for me, and way slower than ssh.