Uppity peripherals: the printer joins in

My taskbars are beset by noisy peripherals. I have already mentioned the modem, the mouse and the screen. Now my printer has joined in. And not only does it insist on putting an icon in the tray, but when I log in it has taken to putting up a modal dialog complaining about my lowly status and telling me to log in again as administrator.

And I've already had to delete two admin-protected icons it insisted on adding to my desktop.

And it adds nine, count 'em, nine entries to my Start menu. These include one to restore the tray icon, but not one to get rid of it!

All this for a grotty little inkjet so cheap and nasty it's practically disposable. My old PostScript laser, a chunky, dependable workhorse that had long since earned the right to some attention, never asked for any of this. It didn't install shortcuts, advertise itself on the taskbar or demand administrator attention. It just sat on the table and printed.

Both of these were from the same manufacturer, admittedly some 8-9 years apart. When did it become fashionable for peripherals to get uppity and demanding instead of doing their job? And more important, whose idea was it and where do they live?