Connect iPhone to Internet through laptop?

Question

I have a laptop at work that's connected to the the office LAN.

I have an iPhone that sometimes can sort of connect via Sprint, but usually it's pretty slow.

However, when I'm at the office, my iPhone/Sprint can barely connect at all. It's hopeless.

Is there some way my laptop can create a WiFi network that my iPhone can use and thereby share my laptop's fast connection?

I've tried going to "Create network" on my laptop, then "Create computer-to-computer network" and then on my iPhone going to Settings > WiFi > Choose a Network and actually connecting to that WiFi network I just created.

Once I do that, I can look in the iPhone's settings and verify that the phone is supposedly on that WiFi network and it has an I.P. address.

However, in the upper-left area of my iPhone screen it still says, "Sprint" and there's a little circle after it. (Circle???)

In terms of functionality, the phone is still ridiculously slow as if it were still trying to use the more-or-less useless Sprint service.

So is there some better way to do this that allows my iPhone to get a fast connection?

Answer 1

Sounds like Internet Sharing is what you want (go to System Preferences > Sharing). This post and video shows you how to switch it on, although I've not actually tried it myself.

IIRC, the "circle" icon means you have a GPRS connection, not the faster EDGE or 3G connections.