Having a Droid Eris smartphone I was skeptical of getting another "smart device" and rather just paying for a nicer phone under my data plan. I decided I wanted a dedicated MP3 player and "apps" device and use my phone for on-the-go internet browsing, sports scores, email etc and preserve battery life.
It has been a great decision. The hi-res, ultra dpi screen on the Touch and amazing battery life (after figuring out multi-tasking) has been very useful. I am using it a lot for my grad classes believe it or not as a supplementary device. I bought GoodReader right off the bat and syncing PDF files (text books) and PPT to review for notes has been a portable life-saver! I look over notes while on the couch watching football, I'm in bed and scroll through ppt's. And for quick reference I have my textbooks loaded onto the Touch (200MB+) and they read awesome - many thanks to the great display res. And that's just for school!
I have been able to convert some cbr/cbz Scott Pilgrim to pdf to view for enjoyment and surprisingly it reads the comics very well. Watchmen is a little more condensed so I would not recommend doing entire reading sessions on it unless you don't mind some scrolling due to zoom.
Gaming is a fun little thing to do on the can lol and to pass some time while in the coffee shop etc.
So obviously I think highly of the iPod Touch 4G with having school in mind and it hasn't disappointed! I'm a big music guy and having iTunes on OS X is very well integrated and I like it as my music device. Always been a Nano guy, but since they seemed to have gone "backwards" with that line, the Touch was a great upgrade for myself.