Windows Phone 8, Sky Drive and getting your photos back !

I've a nice new Windows Phone 8 Nokia 920. Another family member has a Windows Phone 7.5 Nokia 800.

In both cases the most convenient way of interacting with files on the phone on a day to day basis is Sky Drive. The Windows Phone 8 device will mount like a USB drive, the Windows Phone 7.5 device needs "Zune". The last thing I wanted to install was another iTunes like program on my Windows 7 desktop.

So... from a quick Google it appeared possible to map Sky Drive as a drive under Windows 7 but not massively easy.

I tried the "recommended method" which (summarised from the Microsoft website) is:

1. Right-click Computer.
2. Select Map Network Drive from the resulting menu.
3. Use the Drive dropdown to select the desired Drive letter.
4. In the Folder textbox, input
\\docs.live.net@SSL\your_skydrive_id_number\^2Documents
 Where your_skydrive_id_number is the ID number you copied back in step 2. This will map the drive to your My Documents folder on SkyDrive.
To map the drive to your Public folder, use
\\docs.live.net@SSL\your_skydrive_number\^2Public
5. Click the Finish button.
6. After a few seconds, Windows will ask you for your credentials, input your SkyDrive username and password, click the Remember my credentials checkbox and click the OK button.

The skydrive ID is a long random number like 0009FEEE3C3DF71D

This didn't work for me.

What did work was the following (lifted from a comment on the Microsoft Website):

Go into your SkyDrive online.  If needed create a dummy Excel document on the PC and upload it to SkyDrive. Select the Excel document you have uploaded and click the "Open in Excel" Link to the left. 

Once it's open in Excel, click on the Windows button on the top right and put your mouse on the most recent document opened.  It will show a web address, like https://d.docs.live.net/yourIDhere/^.Documents - write this down. 

(the yourIDhere is replaced by the long random number as above)

Go to the Windows button on the bottom left of your computer, right click "My Computer" and click "map network drive".  Then click the link that says "Connect to a website where you can store your documents and pictures" then click "next", then select a Custom Network, and "next".  At the next screen type in the address you wrote down. 

You're done, it shows up as a folder under My Computer!! 

It's much faster than Mapping an actual drive!