Windows 7: windows live mail calendars

I'm really frustrated by my new laptop. The company won't give me Outlook but rather Windows Live Mail as a local mail client. I'm struggling with scheduling meetings.

What I'm after:

I want to use a Google Calendar to schedule meetings.
I want them to show up in the calendar section of my WLM on the laptop, not just on the net.
I don't want (or need) a Hotmail account
Ideally there would be two way sync between Google calendar on the laptop and my Google Calendar on the net.

Is there a way to get pop-up notifications on WLM?
And lastly, what is the email file extension for the mail messages (e.g. Outlook it's a pst)? I want to create a backup since all the mail is stored on the local machine.

I would appreciate any instructions or tutorials on my list.

Thanks