Microsoft said Tuesday that it is offering a subscription-based payment option for Office 2007 in South Africa, continuing a test it had been running with the previous version of the productivity suite.

The option is aimed at making the software more affordable to generally less affluent consumers in emerging markets. It had been offering a similar program for Office 2003 in Mexico and Romania as well as South Africa, and has the FlexGo program for Windows.

A three-month subscription to Office 2007 would cost 199 rand ($28.54 USD). First-time users of the program are also given three additional months free. The option is only available on new computers, Microsoft says.

Similar to the way Office trials currently expire, once the term of the rental ends without renewal, users will only be able to view documents in a reduced functionality mode.

Users have the option to rent either Office Small Business or Office Student and Teacher Edition, according to reports. Consumers must buy the rental software from where they purchased their computers.

Making its software affordable to those in developing countries has become somewhat of a priority for Microsoft. In these areas, the Redmond company is seeing much stronger competition from Linux, which is far cheaper to put on PCs, thus allowing them to be sold at a lower cost.

Office 2007 will be added to the FlexGo bundle when it refreshes the products available through the program. Currently, the leasing program only includes Windows and PC hardware, but no Office.