Sony did it with its Vaio C series laptops. Dell followed suit with some spiffy new Inspirons. And now Gateway is scrambling to inject a little color into its own notebook lineup.

On Thursday, the PC vendor announced two 'sexified' laptops with some impressive new specs. The Gateway M-6816 and T-6815 will come in Crimson Red, Pacific Blue, or Slate Grey, and will start shipping on July 22, each starting at $900, according to the company.

But Gateway didn't just gussy up their appearance. With Intel's latest Centrino Duo processors, the new laptops also come with an array of new features, such as a fancy precision-touch multimedia control panels with smooth-cut keys in the keyboard surround, an integrated web cam, and an embedded fingerprint readers.

Unfortunately, only the M-Series laptop (with a 15.4-inch widescreen display) will feature 1080p viewing capabilities and a High Definition Multimedia Interface for digital video and audio out. The T-Series, on the other hand, packs a slightly smaller 14.1-inch display for increased portability. Gateway also says plans are underway to offer other customizable options for the notebooks in the near future, such as DirectX 10 GPUs like ATI's Mobility Radeon HD 2400 XT on the M-series, as well as HD DVD and Blu-ray optical drive options.

Hey, Gateway may be a little late to the "laptop-as-customizable-fashion-accessory game," but it's nice to see the company finally got there.