When you say "Rugged" are you talking about something you toss in the floor of your pickup while you go to the next Steer Auction. Or are you just looking for something durable that will not fall apart in three years of normal use? Dell Latitude 14 Inch 5430 Rugged Laptop | Dell USA or this Dell Latitude 3540 Laptop with 13th Gen Intel® Core™ i7 processors | Dell USA \#Iwork4Dell More on reddit.com

5430s seem to have a lot of issues with cameras/audio in my experience. If you can afford to, the 5440 is worth the extra money. More on reddit.com

Go for it since the Latitude 7400 series is pretty good for dev work and light VMs, especially if you’re getting at least 16GB RAM and an SSD. I bought a refurbished one myself on this eBay listing: https://ebay.us/Jpwgit last year, not the exact model, but similar and it’s been dependable. #ad More on reddit.com

So the first question is what level of rugged you need, and the fact that you're using CF-53s answers that question. The second question is: why aren't you using a newer version of the same thing? The CF-54 or the current "Toughbook 55"? If it's simply a matter of cost, then you should be explicit. Dell has a fully-rugged and a semi-rugged version of their Latitudes, but if anything they're more expensive than the Toughbooks. It seems Dell wants to sell into the market that's too risk-averse to use anything without a "Dell" label, even a Panasonic Toughbook. The next item down from a CF-53 are the Thinkpad line, which are always MIL STD 810G or the new 810H . These, and certain competing models from HP, Dell, or Acer, that are also 810G or 810H ruggedized, are high-volume units with usually quite reasonable prices, despite being not that far away from a CF-53 in most respects. Thinkpads do well with the occasional impact, and the mainline models have flow-through keyboards that will harmlessly drain liquids poured through them. More on reddit.com