I just bought an Epson 4870 scanner, and was wondering what would be the best way to scan my stuff. I was told no need to scan more then 300 dpi, with ICE, and at least 24 bit maybe even 48.

It all depends on what you are scanning and what the scan will be used for. Most prints are not going to contain much more info than what you would get from a 300 dpi scan...a newspaper or magazine image would have even less. If you are scanning transparent film however, you will need to scan at much higher resolutions order to obtain good results (if we are talking mostly about 35mm slides/transparencies).

Another thing to keep in mind is the intended use of the scan. If you are scanning a slide simply to post the image on the web, you likely do not need to scan at 4800dpi since all that additional info is going to be discarded anyway when the image is sized for the web.