diff --git a/Changes b/Changes
index 4bd98093..703354e4 100644
--- a/Changes
+++ b/Changes
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-=head1 Changes in DBD-Oracle 1.17 (svn rev NNN)
+=head1 Changes in DBD-Oracle 1.17 (svn rev 2334)
 
   Fixed csform setting for Oracle 8.0.
   Fixed csform setting for some UTF8 cases.
@@ -19,6 +19,7 @@
   Updated README.aix thanks to Stephen de Vries.
   Updated README.macosx thanks to Stephen de Vries.
   Renamed README.*'s to add .txt suffix to make life easier for some.
+  Removed README.utf8 since the topic was covered better in the main docs.
 
   The Copyright terms for DBD::Oracle have been simplified and now read:
     The DBD::Oracle module is free software; you can redistribute it
diff --git a/MANIFEST b/MANIFEST
index c49e9e68..2de2b637 100644
--- a/MANIFEST
+++ b/MANIFEST
@@ -29,7 +29,6 @@ README.login.txt
 README.longs.txt
 README.macosx.txt
 README.sec.txt
-README.utf8.txt
 README.vms.txt
 README.win32.txt
 README.wingcc.txt			Notes about building with mingw32 and cygwin32
diff --git a/Oracle.pm b/Oracle.pm
index d42c6440..aad6131c 100644
--- a/Oracle.pm
+++ b/Oracle.pm
@@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
 
 require 5.003;
 
-$DBD::Oracle::VERSION = '1.16';
+$DBD::Oracle::VERSION = '1.17';
 
 my $ORACLE_ENV  = ($^O eq 'VMS') ? 'ORA_ROOT' : 'ORACLE_HOME';
 
diff --git a/README.clients.txt b/README.clients.txt
index 84a50c3d..274ca435 100644
--- a/README.clients.txt
+++ b/README.clients.txt
@@ -1,6 +1,11 @@
 This file contains some random notes relating to minimal Oracle
 configurations for building and/or using DBD::Oracle / Oraperl.
 
+
+*** ALL THE TEXT BELOW IS OLD ***
+*** THE PREFERED METHOD IS TO USE Oracle Instant Client ***
+
+
 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 With recent versions of Oracle (specifically >= 7.3) you may be
 able to build DBD::Oracle without Pro*C installed by using the Oracle
diff --git a/README.utf8.txt b/README.utf8.txt
deleted file mode 100644
index 7b7738b9..00000000
--- a/README.utf8.txt
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,49 +0,0 @@
->From Perl 5.6.0 onwards DBD::Oracle supports UTF8 as local
-character set (using OCI8). Thus, when the environment 
-variable NLS_LANG ends with "utf8", DBD::Oracle marks Perl 
-strings as unicode (when multibyte characters are present). 
-This affects the handling of CHAR/VARCHARx columns and 
-LONGs/CLOBs.
-
-Multibyte chars in Perl 5.6.0:
-
-Perl 5.6.0 switches to character semantics (as compared to
-byte) for multibyte strings. According to Perl documentation
-this is done transparently to Perl scripts - all builtin
-operators know about it. DBD::Oracle tries to preserve this
-transparency as far as Oracle allows this (see below).
-
-As a consequence, "LongReadLen" now counts characters and
-not bytes when dealing with LONG/CLOB values. Selected LONGs
-and CLOBs will return at most LongReadLen chars, but may
-contain a multiple of that in actual bytes.
-
-blob_read issued on CLOBs will also use character semantics.
-You have to take extra precautions when using such strings
-in a byte-size context, for example a fixed size field in
-a protocol message. This is not specific to DBD::Oracle as
-such, but be warned.
-
-You need patches at least up to 6090 for Perl 5.6.0 for utf8
-to work with DBD::Oracle. (For WinUsers: ActiveState build 
-beyond 613 will probably do).
-
-
-Multibyte chars in Oracle 8(i)
-
-CHAR/VARCHAR and friends count size in bytes, not characters.
-If you have a Oracle database created with character set utf8
-and insert a string with 10 characters into a VARCHAR2(10)
-column, this will only work if the string is 10 bytes long.
-If the string is longer, it will fail (and report and error). 
-This behaviour is inherent to Oracle/OCI and not influenced 
-by DBD::Oracle.
-
-This is then the place where transparency of utf8 breaks. If
-you want to check your parameter lengths before insert, you 
-have to switch Perl to bytes semantics (see "use bytes" in
-Perl documentation).
-
-
-
-2000-05-09, Stefan Eissing (se@acm.org)