The machine has to be running pure DOS because in Windoze, you're not allowed to go behind the OS's back and talk to the hardware directly. Which is one of the things I hate about it, actually.
For your purposes, on a dedicated machine that you have total control over, maybe. But in a multi tasking environment that you don't have control over, where you potentially have to coexist with programs written by idiots (or by people who are too clever for their own good), would you have it any other way?