Generally the best idea is perhaps to get an external multi-card reader, like this one:
http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/86542
Then you just take the card out of your camera (or anyone else's, maybe a friend's), and put it in that. It'll appear in My Computer as though you've just put in a CD or floppy -- just another drive really. You can then copy the pictures to wherever you want.
My suggestion is that the first thing you do is burn all the photos straight from the card to a CDR, so that they're safe. You're then free to play with them in some software application without risk of ruining the pictures and not being able to get the original back.