Hi. I'm the developer of 'Photo Transfer App'. An iPhone/iPad app that lets you transfer photos from your iPhone to your computer (and vice versa). You can transfer up to 50 pics at one time from iPhone to your computer over wifi (no cables and no iTunes required).
Please please please buy an external hard drive and start using Time Machine.
You can get the photos off of your phone using any number of photo-transfer programs, but they are shrunken, compressed photos that are nowhere near the quality of the originals.
Not to mention all the other files on your computer that aren't on your phone at all.
Buy this drive if your laptop mostly lives on a desk and you can plug the drive into a wall outlet, or buy this one if you want to move around and use the hard drive without plugging it in to an outlet.
Time Machine is SO easy to use, there's no reason to ever be in this situation.