max, min, VC++6 and 7

Could someone provide me a brief explanation as to why max and min are redefined in \boost\config\suffix.hpp and \boost\config\platform\win32.hpp. It appears that the reason is that the max and min macros defined in windef.h are not type safe. Also, in user application code, would it be recommended to always use the _MAX and _MIN macros in VC++ 6 and 7 so that the STL implementations are always used, and just reserve explicit max and min for the Boost library code?