There is a good chance if you’re using Snow Leopard, that you’re not using your Mac to its full potential. Most Macs bought within the past yer or so have 64-bit processors which can take advantage of Snow Leopard’s 64-bit mode, but Snow Leopard defaults to booting into 32-bit mode. Running your computer in 64-bit mode will generally be faster, though you do have to keep an eye out for some software with incompatibility issues. The easy way to boot in to 64 bit mode is to hold down the 6 and 4 keys each time you boot.

But if you want to always boot in to 64-bit mode by fault, check out this free donationware software. Startup Mode Selector will not only set your system to default into 32-bit or  64-bit mode, but it will also tell you if your system has a 64-bit or 32-bit processor at all. This is a lot easier and much more convenient than playing with Terminal to get your 64-bit mode set up.