Windows 7: connecting my samsung smartphone

The software that came with my phone will not work for Windows 7 (64 bit) and I am going to try to use a card reader instead.

But the shop assistant in Maplins has assured me that I should not need any software to see my mobile phone's content and that I should be able to open the micro sd card in the PC just by going into Explorer.

When I try this I do get a noise out of the computer as I connect the phone to the usb port but it does not show up as a drive in Computer.

So will I definitely be needing a card reader to transfe files from the phone to the PC after all?

thanks