Thanks Jody. The earlier postings you referred me to are very informative, but rather depressing re the lack of support from Sony for the IP7E camcorder.
I can easily read the memory stick into the Mac by using a SmartDisk USB Universal Media Reader, a very useful little box for reading flash memories, and cost only GBP 30 in UK.
To edit any reasonable length of film though I obviously need to read the tape and the prospects for doing this on the Mac appear to be nil. None of my PCs have a firewire port installed, and moreover I hear very bad reports of the MovieShaker package which is supplied with the camcorder as a film editor for the PC.
This is all very disappointing since an earlier model Sony camcorder, DCR-110E I think, works fine with the Mac via a firewire port and i-Movie software. A clear case of CAVEAT EMPTOR I suppose!
Peter