Mass production of the so-called $100 laptop has begun, five years after the concept was first proposed.

The laptop, which was originally promoted as a $100 computer that would change education in the developing world, now costs around $188.

Computer manufacturer Quanta has started building the low-cost laptops at a factory in Changshu, China.

One Laptop per Child (OLPC), the group behind the project, said that children in developing countries would begin receiving machines this month. Last month, OLPC received its first official order for 100,000 machines from the government of Uruguay.

“Today represents an important milestone in the evolution of the One Laptop per Child project,” said Nicholas Negroponte, founder of OLPC. The organisation had reached the critical stage despite “all the naysayers,” he said.

Initially OLPC has said that it required three million orders of the XO to make production viable. Governments were originally offered the machines in lots of 250,000.

So far, however, the organisation’s only confirmed order is from Uruguay. The South American country has ordered 100,000 of the machines with an option to purchase a further 300,000.

Other governments have expressed interest in the machines.

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