I can live with this. Buggy software drivers wreak havoc and security vulnerabilities. I routinely use expensive industrial equipment without signed drivers, and the problem seems to be a warning from the installer.

This seems to be the case indeed. The couple of times Windows BSOD'd on me was always because of faulty drivers and more often than not the unsigned ones.

IIRC the only BSOD I got on XP on my thinkpad since 2006 was caused by not even driver bug, but by driver that seems to have intentionally caused BSOD.

Win10 even changed the requirements actually: https://www.osr.com/blog/2015/03/18/microsoft-signatures-req...

Personally, I think that signing all drivers off a single root makes sense, but I am concerned about the EV requirement. EricLaw mentioned before that they don't sell them to individuals, for example.

Is it any different than the Apple iOS developer license?

Yes. The certificates Microsoft requires use the standard CA system, and are pretty much bog-standard code signing certificates, so the key you need can also be used to sign other windows apps you make, java apps, mozilla add-ons, etc.

I used my Authenticode cert for this, it wasn't very expensive.

How much out of interest? I see prices of 180 USD a year on Google search. It's not expensive but for say an open source project which might not be bringing in income it's an annoying cost.

http://codesigning.ksoftware.net/ from $73 to $95 per year

You also have to pay for each signature ($100 I think, not really sure). And the certification process is anything but easy (though it depends on the type of the driver).

I didn't, the signing was trivial, this is for a printer driver.

What's the barrier for that? You can develop drivers without signing the drivers and obtain them in the deployment phase.