The VienerX Newsletter

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Last week, we got the chance to go out to TiresOnly, one of our newest customers, for their opening day. Wayne and Jordan drove out to Finksburg, Maryland to see the finished build and have one of our company vehicles take the honor of being the first customer car serviced in the shop. Jordan also was brought in to shoot a series of promo videos for both TiresOnly and VienerX.

The experience was a very positive one. The site is something to behold, or, as Jordan put it “I don’t hang out in tire shops very often, but that is by far the nicest one I’ve been to.” Wayne and Jordan got to meet the entire TiresOnly staff on site and admire the handiwork of our VienerX low voltage cabling team, who deserve huge praise for doing a standout job and getting the project done with time to spare despite some setbacks.

It was a unique experience for the team that went out, and one that will not soon be forgotten. Check out the VienerX social media feeds soon for our videos from TiresOnly.

We have written a lot about Microsoft recently, and the reasoning is simple: Microsoft has a lot going on that is highly interesting for the market as a whole and could directly affect enterprise end users.

About a month ago, we discussed a subtle acknowledgement on Microsoft’s earnings call that Redmond might be changing its AI strategy. That became very real last week at Microsoft Build 2026, Microsoft’s annual flagship development conference.

Teams with AI

Microsoft made several bold AI claims, including that it is striving to dramatically lower water usage and prevent its data center build outs from raising local electricity prices. If it can pull either of these off at scale, we will be impressed.

One idea the software company has been pushing hard is that enterprises do not need a high level of technology knowledge to leverage its AI models. This seems to be the central sell of Microsoft’s broader “IQ” layer, including tools such as Web IQ and Foundry IQ, which are designed to synthesize data from across Microsoft’s ecosystem and give more context to agentic AI tools.

How this really works is still unclear, but the company keeps hammering the idea that enterprises can tune these features to how they actually work. This sounds promising, but execution will determine whether it performs as promised.

Copilot+ PC Takes a Back Seat

One of the, in many opinions, major misfires of Microsoft’s consumer AI push was the Copilot+ PC brand. Copilot+ PCs are a special class of Windows 11 devices with built-in NPUs, specialized processors designed to run AI workloads locally.

Not a horrible idea in theory. In practice, this concept has been slammed. The features added were reviewed as borderline useless for most people, the differences in performance between Copilot+ PCs and standard Windows devices were seen as inconsequential, and the pricing was heavily criticized, with the cheapest devices initially coming in at over $1,000.

It seems that Microsoft is continuing to listen, because the branding was not a major focus at Build 2026. Instead, the company emphasized AI products, enterprise tools, and developer capabilities that appear less tied to the original Copilot+ PC consumer pitch.

The branding may not be gone, but it seems to be getting quieter. The only question is how quickly Microsoft moves away from making Copilot+ PC the centerpiece of its consumer AI story.

RTX Spark with Windows

Something that might not hit end users right away, but certainly made power users and industry watchers raise their eyebrows, was the Surface RTX Spark Dev Box.

It is tiny, runs Windows 11, and uses NVIDIA’s Arm-based PC chip, which features a built-in Blackwell GPU and can push a stunning 128GB of unified RAM shared between the CPU and GPU. For those less tech inclined, that is an absurd amount of processing power for something that fits in the palm of your hand.

NVIDIA is also pushing this as a step forward in local AI model development, giving developers more ability to build, test, and run AI workloads locally rather than relying entirely on the cloud.

Pricing information has not been released, but given the specs, it is hard to see this device landing anywhere near mainstream PC pricing.

By: Jordan Viener

For most of my life, everything operated in seasons.

Between roles at in sports at North Dakota State, Temple, and La Salle, my schedule was almost entirely shaped by athletic calendars. Preseason preparation led into competition, competition led into postseason, and eventually everything reset again. Even during the busiest stretches of the year, there was always an understanding that a natural pause existed somewhere ahead.

Summer always meant something.

Not necessarily because of the weather or even the time off itself, but because life moved differently. The pace slowed down. Expectations shifted. There was room to breathe before the cycle started again.

Working in sports delayed certain realities longer than most careers probably do. Sports creates structure around everything. There is a beginning, an ending, and usually a scoreboard waiting at the end of the night to tell you exactly how things went.

Real life does not work that way.

This year, for the first time in my life, summer does not really feel separate anymore. There is no built-in off season waiting around the corner. No automatic slowdown. Just another stretch of time, and the responsibility that comes with deciding how to use it.

That has been strange to adjust to.

I am not even someone who particularly loves Mid-Atlantic summers. They are hot, humid, overcrowded, and somehow every road becomes impossible to drive on after 2 p.m. But summer was never really about the weather. It was about expectation. It was the understanding that life itself would ease up for a little while.

Recently, I was talking with a coach I worked with about how odd the transition into business has felt. I mentioned how difficult it can be operating in a world where success is rarely obvious and where progress can feel invisible for long stretches of time.

He laughed.

Then he brought up a game our team played against one of the top programs in the country. We lost, but we competed the entire night. We stayed in the fight, responded to adversity, and gave the best version of ourselves that we could under those circumstances. Afterwards, despite the result, the coaching staff was genuinely happy with how we performed.

That conversation changed the way I think about winning.

Sometimes winning is not about the final result. Sometimes it is about meeting the moment correctly. Managing expectations. Controlling your response. Understanding what success realistically looks like in the situation directly in front of you.

The transition from sports into business has created a lot of “maybes.”

Maybe this works. Maybe it doesn’t. Maybe you are moving in the right direction. Maybe success looks different than you originally imagined it would. Unlike sports, there is rarely a clear final score at the end of the day.

Working in IT only magnifies that feeling. Technology changes constantly. Expectations change constantly. The job itself is a continual learning process. Not just learning systems or platforms, but learning how you work best, how you manage your energy, and how to stay disciplined even when there is no external structure forcing you to do it.

That is probably why this summer feels so different.

The summer itself did not disappear. The expectation of summer disappeared.

Now, there is no automatic slowdown unless I create one. No one decides when it is time to push harder or when it is time to step back and recharge. That responsibility shifts onto you.

Oddly enough, that realization has made summer feel more important, not less.

It forces you to become intentional with your time. To understand that balance is not something built into adulthood. It is something you have to create for yourself.

Not growing up in the dramatic sense, but learning how to define your own pace, your own expectations, and ultimately, your own version of winning.