SecuritySpy's minimum system requirements are a G3 processor and Mac OS X Tiger 10.4 or later.

However, the actual demands of your system will vary, depending on a number of factors. You can use our system requirements calculator to help you choose a system to suit your Mac, or a Mac to suit your desired system.

By way of illustration, this page gives a rough guide to the number of cameras you can connect to models from the current Mac line, assuming that you are using motion detection and that you set SecuritySpy to record using the JPEG codec at a good resolution (640 x 480) and a moderate frame rate (10 frames per second).

Mac mini

or MacBook

Maximum number of cameras: 20
 

iMac

or MacBook Pro

Maximum number of cameras: 25
 

Mac Pro

or Xserve

Maximum number of cameras: 40
 

Assuming that you want to keep captured footage for about a week, you should allow 30 GB of free disk space per camera.

If you set SecuritySpy to record using the MPEG4 codec you will only need about 9 GB of free disk space per camera. However, the MPEG4 codec uses much more processing power than JPEG, and therefore doesn't allow you to connect as many cameras.

You can increase your system's available storage space with one or more external USB 2 or FireWire Hard Disks.