I only played each game once, so I have not heard about this. When I played I chose "gifted" so I could have +1 stats in everything, then just shifted around Agi to 8. And then used stims before big fights. If you do find out let us know, I searched through a couple of FAQ/guides and couldn't find the answer.
Also agree that Fallout 1 is cooler than Fallout 2.
Haj if you can boot into XP you should be fine. There are fan made patches for WinXP that fix nearly every bug that you'll probably never encounter one. I played all of Fallout 1 on my laptop's track pad.