m360 high pitch noise

:gateway: I am using a Gateway mx6627 laptop which is basically a Gateway m360XL.

There is one problem with this machine - it makes high pitch, low volume squeaky noise when I connect my USB mouse or USB key to it. The noise is coming from underneath the keyboard(not the speakers), steady but making small breaks like some morse code. The noise is not loud, but it is really annoying and noticeable especially in a quiet room.

The noise seems to disappear or masked when I disconnect the USB mouse or running other cpu-intensive process on the computer.
I tried to disable the power management on the USB hub in device manager, didn't work.
Disabled the USB hub device itself in the device manager, but I had to disable all of them before the noise disappear.
I tried to disable the wireless network, but it didn't help.
I tried different USB mouses - Logitech, Microsoft and it's the same.
I also exchanged for another unit of the same model but the noise remains.
The only thing that seems to work is to not use the USB mouse at all. But it is easier for me to navigate with a mouse than the touch pad.

I did some research on this forum and the internet and some people using different brand of centrino laptops seemed to encounter similar problem. Is it true that this noise issue is quite common with centrino laptops? Is there any remedy for the situation?

Please help.