This is how I started out in Fallout 3 and faired pretty well. I notice with Intelligence maxed out in New Vegas, I only get 15 skill points to distribute when I level up. Is this this the best way to go or could I have Intelligence lower and distribute SPECIAL points to more useful perks? If so, what are the more useful SPECIAL perks to dump points in?

Depends on what type of character you want to play... You can't get 100 in all skills and 10 in all SPECIAL in this game like you can in Fallout 3 so you have to pick and choose your skills instead of just dumping points into them randomly.