Re: printer drivers that require ADMIN access
it's a problem with Microsoft at the root cause of it all.
Not that this excuses the printer manufacturers from developing some of the worst abominations of software developer this side of Samsung, but Microsoft really did not help whatsoever.
Even when Microsoft eventually bothered to put in place standard TCP/IP print driver port, the printer manufacturers (who would typically make a room of monkeys mashing keyboards look like a highly talented room of developers) still needed to support the older OSes. As a result they are not going to create what would essentially be entirely new drivers to link to the new MS provided print driver port and maintain these separately to the support for older OSes. Some did, of course, but not many and they also were highly unlikely to go through their back catalogue of printers and create new drivers for all of them.