However, the production cost of the XO machines has almost doubled to $190 each since OLPC began its work.

The laptops, which are being built by Taiwanese company Quanta Computer, keep their costs low using the free Linux operating system.

So far orders have been received from Uruguay and Mongolia.

However, the foundation also plans to sell the machines for $399 in America and Canada, with another laptop being donated to a developing country as part of that cost.

The project suffered a setback recently when the Nigerian government chose to order 17,000 of Intel's Classmate budget PCs instead.

The XO computers were championed by professor Nicholas Negroponte from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.