A question about Blender Internal, Hair and Alpha?

Hey there. I’ve been searching for an answer to my question, but my Google-Fu isn’t quite up to scratch to figure out what is likely a pretty simple question.

Anyways, I’m looking to improve my hair on my character models in Blender Internal. I am looking to use alpha maps to make hair strands appear nicer and rounder while conserving on polygons (as I’m trying to eventually do models for games and animations in a cartoony-stylistic approach, a low poly count is vital to me).

However, I’m having a hard time finding resources on how to use alpha maps/transparencies with Blender Internal at a let alone a tutorial that uses alpha maps with character modeling for hair.

I was wondering if anyone knew how to use alpha maps/transparency with textures with Blender Internal, and if anyone had any experience with alphamapping hair if they could point me in the right direction for doing it.

Thank you!

Edit: Also, is it possible to have the alpha map be completely separate from the colour map? I want to be able to give the hair a simple texture so that they all line up with the grain of the hair, but have a different map altogether for the alpha so that I can draw each individual lock how I want to.

Is this possible?

https://www.blender.org/manual/render/blender_render/materials/properties/transparency.html
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro/Using_a_texture_to_make_a_material_partially_transparent

The second link relates to old version of Blender but is still valid.