I agree with you that Microsoft forces us (developers) to keep up with time and use such an ugly things like their USB. It is terrific for controller developers, but good for high-end perepheriantals and end-user. The problem is that there is missing pipe-oriented (generic) data transfer.
Back to LPT, what do you think the operation
mov LPT_BASE, value
does? Moves data to port? Which port? Modern CPUs are placed to host bus (CPU + cache level II). This bus is connected to PCI bus. LPT port is located on ISA bus connected to PCI bus. If you don't beleive, open Device Manager -> View by Connection
CPU - host bus - PCI - ISA - LPT1
So where the value is moved into?
The role of a driver is to get user request to that port on ISA bus. I use NTPort driver. Search in google. Examples are provided for all languages. Demo is free, license isn't.

Back to MS policy. They could provide people with LPT driver with OS. But they won't do that. They desire bad future for LPT favoring USB. Unfortunately, USB doesn't have generic driver too. MS is for high-end market. :-<
As a developer, I dont like the lack of generic access to LPT and USB, I don't like Visual Studio. Neverthless, Windows is perfect.