How to setup svn with remote working copy – my big question

Everybody know SVN and “everybody” is using it. No doubt SVN is one of the best things that happend in the last time. but for a web developer, svn can be a little frustrating – at least for me.
Let me explain:
I am on a mac, a G4 one,so I cannot afford a MAMP running on my local machine. On the other hand, I use to let clients see in real time the evolution of their projects ( is a pretty good selling advantage , by the way ) so that’s why I need a remote working copy. I want to have a version controlling system but with my working copy on this server, and of course, lazy how I am, without a terminal where to write lines for commit and so on. You get my point.
On the other hand, I like the way a ftp program “caches” my transactions so my editor does not freeze every time I hit ?+S.

How this can be done? How can i accomplish this?

I would like to hear a good and practical solutions for this.
The solution I found is a nice one( of course because is mine ), but is very very sloooooooooow.
I mount a ftp or sftp drive with the working folder on the server on my mac, and I declare here to be the working copy. So in this way, I have a remote live working environment, and a versioning control that helps to keep my work in one piece and forget about backups – well almost.
The only drawback is that the macfuse is very slow on mac so a commit or a simple update seems to take ages – but is a good excuse for a coffee, or another coffee, and another one…..

Do you have a better solution? I would really like to speedup the process, so please let me know your thoughts