Is it possible to disable Versions for all applications?

Solution 1:

I guess you're rather referring to Autosave. This post describes the difference.

To disable Versions, I posted the (maybe risky) procedure here:

How to disable Versions in OS X Lion

However for Autosave the easiest work-around might be to use "System Preferences" → "Keyboard" → "Keyboard Shortcus" to define a keyboard shortcut (I used ⌘ ⇧ S) for the programs that have Autosave support and the "Duplicate" option in the menu:

For Textedit it will then look like this:

So you would press ⌘+⇧+S, which gives you a new duplicate window and then ⌘+S to save as new filename.

However, you original document will also (continuously) be saved and end up in the state where you created the duplicate - and without Versions (or Time Machine) you won't be able to recover earlier states as soon as you close your original document or the program.