This update is short, since I abandoned the installation of Wubi.  I let it run overnight last night, going to be with an estimated 28 hours remaining.  When I woke up this morning, it was estimating 25 hours, and I guarantee I slept at least 7 hours.  So I quit the install.

I did check the Wubi forums and FAQ, hoping to find some guidance on this slowness, but other than finding one or two other souls with the same problem, I found no answers.  My guess is that something on the laptop (AVG anti-virus, or who knows what) is killing the download speed that other people report being close to 10 minutes.
I think I’ll try again on my desktop machine, and see if the results are better.  More to follow in part 3…