iPhone Syncing in a Windows World...

I'm passing my iPhone 4 to my step-daughter to make way for my new iPhone 5 and I would like to get her phone set up to sync her contacts and calendar seamlessly with her Windows Notebook… so that it works as beautifully as mine does on all my Macs. She wants to use the IOS BackUP to the Cloud feature and be able to have all her calendar events and contacts syncing between her notebook and iPhone4.

Presently she has a Gmail address nothing stored on her notebook… no Outlook or Outlook Express. Do they still have Outlook Express?

Anyway, I've thought of two scenarios.
1. I create a @me.com email address and then forward her Gmail email to it. She then can login to the Cloud from the web to check her calendar and contacts.

2. Let her use Google Sync… does that even work with an iPhone?

So, is there a better simpler cleaner way to do this on a Windows Notebook?

Any help is appreciated.

 

Thank you... that link will be very helpful. I didn't want to over complicate this thing and I'm really out of practice in the Windows World.

thanks again.