It would be nice to remove the printer module to lower the chances of yet another security issues. Registry tools not great not right solution. Want to be able to grep, awk, etc No one place to store information since. In UNIX land it is possible to reference other keys. If you want to change a machines IP address, maybe need to change tens of keys.
Management APIs one API, multiple interfaces.
Today, often GUI only way to set all values many things require a head. In UNIX everything is a command line. To do remote administration you just need a remote shell and everything works. In the NT world you have to make every tool network aware.