Picture problem.

This isnt directly associated with my mac, but when i was with the dark side and using useless windows operated pieces of doo doo, i had alot of pictures on my laptop. then happily it died and i join the good side of the force ;D my HD comes out my old laptop, it was a compaq.
Question is..can i take it to a computer shop and get my pictures back ??

Even better. You could get an enclosure and hook it up to your mac and possibly retrieve data from it. Then you could reformat it using time machine and volia, a perfect backup HD.

You might not be able to read the HD (but you can still format it and use it as a backup) depending on the format. Ask more people around here for helps of identifying the HD's format =)