We’ve seen news this week touching on everything from laptops and tablets to smartphones and your health. Join us as we break down the biggest five news stories.

First up is news that Apple will be refreshing its MacBook Pro lineup, adding Intel’s Sandy Bridge I5 and I7 processors and ditching Nvidia graphic cards for AMD’s Radeon models. The new laptops will still be available in 13, 15 and 17 inch screen sizes and will feature a newly upgraded face time HD camera that boasts 3x times the resolution of the previous models and is designed for video conferencing.

The second item, which also comes from Apple is word that the company will be debuting the newest version of the iPad at a media event being held on March 2nd, at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. The new pad is rumored to be thinner, have a forward facing camera and potentially run off a dual core processor. Invitations to the event have already gone out…still waiting on mine Steve…

This week also marks the debut of the Motorola’s Xoom tablet, which is the first tablet based on Android’s (News - Alert) new HoneyComb Operating system. The device will be available through Verizon for $600 with a new two-year contract or $800 without a contract. While The Xoom currently uses Verizon’s (News - Alert) 3G networks it will be upgradable to the LTE 4G network in the near future.

Sprint has confirmed this week that the HTC (News - Alert) Arrive will launch on March 20th. The Arrive will be Sprints first Windows 7 phone and will feature a full QWERTY keyboard. The phone also boasts a 1GHz Qualcomm (News - Alert) processor, a 5-megapixel camera and 16GB of internal memory.

And for our last piece of news a team of research scientists have determined that only 50 minutes on a cellphone is enough to increase brain activity. The studies lead researcher Dr. Nora Volkow confirmed that glucose metabolism increases in the brain in people who were exposed to a cell phone in the area closet to the antenna. No word yet on what the increased activity means for your grey matter.

Chris DiMarco is a Web Editor for TMCnet. He holds a master's degree in journalism from Quinnipiac University. Prior to joining TMC (News - Alert) Chris worked with e-commerce provider Suresource as a contact center representative and development analyst. To read more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.

Edited by Chris DiMarco