I thought I read a tutorial that mentioned blender could auto assign vertices to the closest armature ( Now I can’t find the tut. gr…). How can this be done? or did I misread that feature ?
edit
oh.
I missed the obvious again, huh.
I guess I’m used to assigning vert. before I parent and I didn’t notice 
Parent Mesh To Armature
It asks three options of which Parent to Armature is the one you want
Now it asks a second question concerning
vertex groups! THird option is yours!
Stefano