Dear Curtis1973,
It works great! And to earle81us who said Barnacle Wi-Fi Tether, Yeah, Baby! I bought an LG Optimus Elite, with Virgin Mobile. Apparently they disable the Wi-fi tethering feature.
I just followed the above steps in the original post, then installed Barnacle Wi-Fi Tether, and my laptop is actually web browsing via my Android data connection. This was a really important innovation to me, since I live at a motel where the wi-fi comes and goes without warning, sometimes for a day or so.
I guess there were some steps that I didn't mention:
I downloaded the mentator II from my Android, and installed it there.
I downloaded poot using Curtis1973's link, above, then uploaded it to my downloads folder on my 'droid ( connected via USB).
I browsed to my downloads folder using Polaris viewer, which is a stock app on my phone.
After that, I followed the Curtis1973 steps.
Then I downloaded / installed Barnacle Wi-Fi Tether using Google Play Store.