Parental controls and internet safety

[NeatFreak]

Dd is almost 8 and starting to use a laptop. It's a basic small laptop with Windows 7 starter on it- we are totally clueless about how to control her access and protect our data on it...
I've set the home page to google safe searcch and set up an administrator with parental controls but that is as far as I've got so far

Any advice for an idiots guide would be much appreciated!

I am not very tecchie but as long as they are using it in a public place e.g.living room that seems to be the most transparent way of monitoring it. And talk to her about internet safety issues too, rather just than being prescriptive.
Hope someone more tecchie than I will be along soon...

Thanks. She knows quite a lot about it (there is some slogan school has drilled into them, which I have forgotten) but for my piece of mind I'd like to be totally confident. I have a password on it so she can't use it wihout permission, meaning we always know when she is using it.