No, Gutsy will have more bugs and problems than the a stable release like 7.04.

"Pre-releases of Gutsy are *not* encouraged for anyone needing a stable
system or anyone who is not comfortable running into occasional, even
frequent breakage. They are, however, recommended for Ubuntu developers
and those who want to help in testing, reporting, and fixing bugs."

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-announce/2007-August/000324.html

Do you know of any software out there that would go through and check my
system for broken packages, bad data sectors in ram/hdd/etc?

broken packages:
===============
apt-get check
or
synaptic

ram test:
========
memtest86+ - this can be choosen from grub

hdd test:
========
fsck

the memtest command did not function for me...

as for the packages...nothing flagged.

I read what another user mailed, that Feisty is slow...and I agree with
that...a lot!

So...is there way to degrade to 6.10 (or whatever Edgy was?) without losing
my files and settings?

Just to remind you here. That the 64 but version of Linux is stable, but not a
whole lot of software has been develope for it yet.