How to downgrade Fedora to previous release?

Hello All! Since Fedora 9-Preview completely unuseable for me I decided to step back to F-8. Thus far I know abount the only solution - backing up /etc/ and /home directories and reinstalling F-8 but maybe there are some ways to downgrade to previous relese and updates. Another one note - since FC-4 of FC-2 I never updated to next release w/o errors and things tends to be more worse than earlier. Looks like it's doe to lack of testing combined with lack of comminications within community (if such a community exists at all). Take a look at the fedora popularity trend compared with other distros popularities. Current mood is "frustrating". -- With best regards!