No, it's not useless. That was my point, though I was being somewhat flip in making it. It's not giving me eyestrain. In fact it's alleviating it. The pixels aren't used to make things *smaller*, they're used to make things *sharper* while keeping them the same size. I have the same number of rows and columns in my text editor, they're just less blurry. The same number of icons on my desktop, only they're sharper and more well-defined. Kind of the difference between reading an illustrated article in a high-quality glossy magazine versus the same text and pictures in a daily newspaper.
I went from an older laptop with a 15" 1440x900 display to this one with a 15" 2880x1800 display. I didn't notice a lot of difference. Marginally clearer, I thought, but no big deal. Certainly not worth the extra money, good thing my company was paying. But then after a few weeks I went back and looked at the old machine. Good gravy, the 1440x900 display looked *awful* after getting used to four times the pixels! I hadn't made major changes to my desktop layout, my editor, my browser, or anything else. The same physical size elements, just with more pixels. It was rather surprising how it didn't make much difference going from low-res to high-res, but going back was a *huge* difference.
So yeah, more pixels is better, at least when the screen is only 18" from my face. On the other hand I keep my TV, clear across the room, at 720 instead of 1080. Why? I'm nearsighted, I can't tell the difference at that range, and running at the lower resolution lets my aging and somewhat underpowered HTPC function better. I can't say that more pixels is better in all situations for everyone, but for me anyway I'll take all the pixels you can give me in a laptop display.