Snow Leopard slowing things down?

Since installing Snow Leopard on my MacBook, I've noticed my "Empty Trash" function has slowed considerably. Before installing it, I could empty 20 items in the trash in a couple of seconds. Now with only 2 or 3 items in the trash, it goes to "Secure Empty Trash" then evokes the spinning color wheel for a few seconds, then takes a few seconds to empty it. It's no big deal but I'm wondering if I need to change any settings, etc. TIA.

Im getting my SL tomorrow here in the UK. Just wondering if I dont back things up will I lose all my .jpg's and .mp3's?

By the looks of it all my apps, Toast, MS Office and such will be ok. The reason I wont be backing the HD up is basically I dont have a portable HD to back it up to.

Snow Leopard

I highly recommend using the Time Machine function with a portable hard drive. I bought a 250GB portable drive a few months ago for around US$100. If I don't back up in 10 days, Time Machine reminds me. After umpteen crashes with my old Windows piece of junk, I really appreciate the Time Machine feature.