You have to installed Leopard version of  JRE 1.5, like I post in previous blog post before doing these steps. After installing SPSS 17 and JRE 1.5 on Snow Leopard, open edit 2 files system:

# vim /Applications/SPSSInc/Statistics17/SPSSStatistics17.0.app/Contents/bin/jvmcfg.ini

Comment this line (put semicolon in front of this line):

jvm_lib_path1=/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/CurrentJDK/Libraries/

and add this line (to change the previous commented line):

jvm_lib_path1=/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/1.5/Libraries/

2. /System/Library/CoreServices/CoreTypes.bundle/Contents/Resources/Exceptions.plist

# sudo vim  /System/Library/CoreServices/CoreTypes.bundle/Contents/Resources/Exceptions.plist

Find this line:

"com.spss.SPSSStatistics.17.0"

"17.1"

and change 17.1 to 17.0

That's all you need to do.  This workaround makes me run SPSS 17 smoothly on my MacBook Pro :)