Am working from home without ArcGIS software today and am pretty pleased with ArcGIS Explorer Online. In some ways it performs better than ArcMap does with basemaps loaded from the same services. Here is something I find missing, though: precise indication of scale.
The Show XY tool is nice, and includes a simple rake scale. It would be nice if it could also show the current scale fraction.
Also, there is no indication in the Map Contents when particular layers are visible or not, so if features don't show up, you're not sure if they are missing, or if you need to zoom in or out to see them. Some visual cue is needed, like the checkbox being grayed out, as in ArcMap. A context menu to zoom to the nearest scale a layer is visible would also be very handy.