The DOS screenshots are reflective of the PC video hardware of the time. Text mode had a fixed 16-color palette [0] at best, the IBM font including graphics characters was preset, while the aspect ratio of the characters wasn’t fixed (the screenshots in the article are 80x25, but I used 80x40 or 80x50, with correspondingly more quadratic text cells). However, the screenshots aren’t quite representative of how things looked on a CRT monitor, however; it looked more vibrant and organic, if that makes sense.

Personally I didn’t find Windows visually pleasing before Windows 95, but much of that can again be attributed to the PC video hardware limitations of the time.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_Graphics_Adapter#Color_p...