I'm under the impression that once I have an ATmega loaded with optiboot, I still need a boards.txt for optiboot in order to download a sketch to the chip.
If I have the wrong impression, and you can just use the stock IDE that would be great!
(The gremlin on my basement machine may have been hiding this fact.)
I've tried the OptiLoader program and it's lightning fast, just couldn't load a sketch with my funky machine.