Have an extra $20,000 to blow? Here's a new product to tempt you: a platinum MacBook Pro with a logo that is not only customized, but features muti-color diamonds. Platinum not your style? The same company also offers laptops plated in white, rose and regular gold, as well as copper, black and silver chrome. It will even provide custom engravings, custom logos and "diamond accents on the unibody chassis," all for jaw-dropping prices.
What company is this? It's Computer Choppers, a brutally named company dedicated to beautifying high-tech gadgets. It largely focuses on products made by Apple, as that's apparently the most popular brand among those willing to pay for electronics coated in precious metals. But if the price is right, the company will coat just about anything, with anything.
"Though we are known for our customized Apple products, we provide our services on most any computer or electronic item," the website's Services page says. "Other specialty plating such as: silver, old english gold, chamagne gold, almond gold, honey gold, rose copper, bronze, and pewter can be requested."
How is it done? In a video interview with CNNMoney, Computer Choppers founder Alex Wiley talks about the craft of gold-plating a computer.
We'll take an iMac, an iPad, a tablet of some sort and we'll strip it down to bare metal, we'll engrave or personalize it for a customer and then go ahead and plate that with 24-karat gold, rose gold, platinum, a whole slew of different types of plating and finishes, and then we go ahead and reassemble that and send that out to the customer.
Computer Choppers is based in the United States, but Wiley told CNNMoney that 90 percent of the company's orders are shipped internationally. The website prominently displays flags from the United States, Germany, France, Russia, Italy, China and India, and the platinum MacBook Pro, for instance, was made for a customer in Azerbaijan.
And in the tradition of dolled-up devices everywhere, these luxury gadgets are spectacular eye candy. Check out a few in the slideshow below.
