title: SQL worth updating from utf8_general_c to utf8_unicode_ci?
body: <p>At some point in the past couple months I came across this article:</p>
  
  <p><a href="http://airbladesoftware.com/notes/fixing-mysql-illegal-mix-of-collations/" rel="nofollow">http://airbladesoftware.com/notes/fixing-mysql-illegal-mix-of-collations/</a></p>
  
  <p>Which stated:</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>The utf8_general_ci collation will do but ideally we want
    utf8_unicode_ci. The former basically ignores all accents: it treats
    ‘ü’ the same as ‘u’. The latter pays attention to accents; it’s a tiny
    bit slower but more accurate.</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>To test the accuracy of that statement I updated an unpublished blog entry with the character <code>ü</code> while the database table structure for the relevant columns were set to <code>utf8_general_c</code> and the character was <em>not</em> converted to a regular <code>u</code>. I had previously seen the Swedish encoding and had, at the time, thought I had somehow inherited bad encodings from an old web hosting years ago.</p>
  
  <p>So ultimately my question is whether or not I should update from <code>utf8_general_c</code> to <code>utf8_unicode_ci</code>? If not was there a fix in My SQL 5.5.27 or later that addressed the encoding issues mentioned on the referenced page?</p>