Installing 2.8.2 without upgrading

All,

I am currently using wordpress 2.6.3 and want to switch to 2.8.2. However, I would rather do a clean install than an actual upgrade. Something tells me that upgrading from 2.6 to 2.8 will be a disaster. I use Nextgen gallery a lot and have lots of pictures . My question is… Once I do a clean install of 2.8.2 and install all the plugins that I want, how do I transfer all my nextgen pictures, pages and posts without having to recreate everything from scratch? Is this possible without upgrading?

Please help we switch to 2.8.

Digimon