I would rather have better pictures than more pixels. So if "someone" (it's always "someone", isn't it, never "me") wants to work on it, then they can spend their time better on things like removing the quality cap, as suggested earlier.

CCD sensor manufacturers cover their bums by specifying "effective" or "save" image dimensions that are on the order of about 5 pixels smaller on each side than the whole sensor. This is to allow for compensating various manufacturing faults that are most prominent at the edges. Some sensors allow using the full image size, others would not go over the effective size.

I personally think it's not woth it. 0.4% or 2%, you won't see the difference one way or another. Unless there are some bad pixels at the edge, then you will definiteky notice.