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Notes about working with Bing Maps (formerly Microsoft Virtual Earth) in ArcGIS Desktop 9.3.1

You can rename the Bing Maps (Microsoft Virtual Earth) group layer and break it apart and use the individual layers it contains separately, but you can't rename the individual layers. You also can't edit the Description or Credits text in the Layer Properties dialog box General tab for the individual layers.
Using the Bing Maps service in ArcMap is very similar to using a cached ArcGIS Server map service such as the ArcGIS Online map services. These services are all tile-based, which means that what you are actually retrieving from the server when you draw the service on a map is one or more image tiles. These services provide tiles at a fixed set of scales. As these tiles have already been created and stored (cached) on the server, the drawing performance of these services is very good. When you use Bing Maps on the web in Microsoft's Live Search Maps™, the zoom in/out control lets you view the map at one of those fixed scales. When you use Bing Maps in an application like ArcMap you are not restricted to working at those fixed scales: you can view the service on your map at any scale and ArcMap automatically resamples the tiles and assembles them for display at the scale you have chosen to work at. The resampling algorithm ArcMap uses will give you good-looking results. If you want to see what the display looks like without any resampling, you can right-click one of the Bing Maps layers and choose the Zoom To Nearest Cache Resolution command. This will automatically zoom your map in or out to the fixed scale supported by the Bing Maps service that is nearest to your map's current scale. This can have the effect of sharpening up your map display if it looked a little fuzzy due to resampling, in much the same way as the Zoom To Raster Resolution command sharpens up your image when working with a raster layer.
If you look in the Layer Properties dialog box Cache tab for one of the individual layers in the Bing Maps group layer, you'll notice that the 'Keep the cache between sessions' option is disabled. This option is available when you work with most cached ArcGIS Server map services, such as the ArcGIS Online map services, but is disabled for Bing Maps. When you open a map that contains Bing Maps, you can be sure that you'll be seeing the most up-to-date content from Microsoft, such as recent additions to the Aerial layer or updates to the Roads layer, because the image tiles will get retrieved from the server instead of being read from a local cache of tiles stored on your machine.
Each of the layers in the Bing Maps group layer uses a projected coordinate system called Mercator Auxiliary Sphere, which uses GCS_WGS_1984 as its geographic coordinate system. The Bing Maps Web service projects on-the-fly and can be transformed to match your data precisely in the usual way like any other data source.
If you create a map containing Bing Maps and then use the File > Save A Copy command to save a copy of the map so it can be opened in a previous version of ArcGIS, the Bing Maps service layers won't be present in the Table Of Contents of the copy of your map that is saved. Bing Maps service layers are not supported in ArcGIS 9.2 and earlier.
If you open a map, globe, or layer file containing Bing Maps when you are not connected to the internet, or if Bing Maps is not accessible for any reason, you'll get a message that the service cannot be accessed. If the login dialog appears at this point, press Cancel. The map, globe or layer file will open but the Bing Maps layers will be shown broken (shown in the Table Of Contents with a red exclamation mark) indicating that the server can't be accessed. You can't repair a Bing Maps layer by clicking on the red exclamation mark. You can still work with the map or globe in the normal way, but in order to get the broken layers to display, you'll have to close the map or globe, reconnect your machine to the Internet, and then reopen the map or globe. When you reopen the map or globe, you'll be prompted to login again.