yes, you can use the little Javascript dwilkinsjr posted in the mentioned thread. Just replace the tag "<PRELOAD_IMAGE_NAME>" by "o_<IMAGE_NAME>"
Code:
<script type="text/javascript">
if (document.images)
{
img1 = new Image();
img1.src = "images/o_<IMAGE_NAME>";
}
</script>
Place the code sniplet at the end of the html source in your image_template.html (
after the html of the image).
You do not need the Image Pre-Loader Addon at all since this retreives only the filename of the next image.