As a relalative newbie myself I think I can say Python is used for anything any major programming language is used for. One of its many strengths is scalability - it can be used to great effect as a scripting language AND as an object oriented language for creating large, GUI apps.
Yours is not an easy question to answer - there are as many uses for python as there are 'computing tasks'. Go to http://www.awaretek.com/tutorials.html for a load of tutorials and examples -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
