Not that I believe in the whine, but remember that you cannot install a version of the OS that is older than the machine. In other words, for the machines that came preinstalled with 10.4.6 or later, they cannot install 10.4.5.
I remember having a whine when I got it, and that was Mac OS X 10.4.4.
I know I updated to 10.4.5 at one point, and I don't remember the whine going away.
But then again, I rarely hear the whine (as I use a Bluetooth mouse 99% of the time).
Nah, what I mean is that the whine seems like a similar problem to the lines on the PowerBook screens. It's something I doubt most people would notice if there wasn't already such a hullabaloo about it.
It's because Apple updated the USB driver to fix the bug that was stopping the processor from going into the deepest power saving modes. Although you get the "whine," you should also get better battery life with the updates.