I use PS1='$ ' on the local machine and 'foo$ ' if I've ssh'd to foo. I prefer this because: the location of the cursor is more fixed, it doesn't wander across the columns as the environment changes, so my eye finds it more quickly; I've a decent amount of line left before it wraps at the end of the terminal, and I often type 100+-character pipelines on the fly; a couple of taps of Enter gives almost blank lines that…
Solution to that: multi-line prompts. First line with lots of info, second line just '$ '. Or RPROMPT if you are using zsh ([...] RPROMPT parameter. If this is set, the shell puts a prompt on the right side of the screen.)
That wouldn't give the sequence of almost-blank lines I find most helpful. It would also merge the first, long, line of the prompt with the tail of the previous command's output.