New York: After a long dispute, Microsoft has agreed to offer Windows for the computers of 'One Laptop Per Child' (OLPC) educational project for children in developing nations.

The alliance between Microsoft and OLPC , a non-profit association, was announced Thursday, reports The New York Times.

The software giant had resisted joining the project because the low-cost XO laptops in question used the Linux operating system, an open source alternative to Windows.

The small, sturdy XO laptops have been hailed for their innovative design. But they are sold mainly to governments and education ministries, and initial sales were slow, partly because officials were reluctant to buy machines that did not run Windows, the dominant operating system in the world.

"The people who buy the machines are not the children who use them, but government officials in most cases," Nicholas Negroponte, founder of OLPC group and MIT professor, was quoted as saying by the Times. "And those people are much more comfortable with Windows."

The XO laptop weighs 3.2 pounds and comes with a video camera, microphone, game-pad controller and a screen that rotates into a tablet configuration. The laptop now costs about $200 each and the project's goal is to eventually bring the price down to about $100.