size of VVarChar fields

[Dave Parizek]

In V4RB1.x, VVarChar fields were limited to size of 504 (chars?).

Now max length can be up to 65535 bytes.

With default RB encoding (UTF-8?), how many bytes per character?

2?  So VVarChar can now be substantilly larger, and could be used  
instead of VText in more cases.

How to decide which to use?

How does this effect speed?  Or rather, what considerations should we  
keep in mind to maximize speed or when considering the performance/ 
functionality tradeoff?

Thanks,
Dave Parizek