In the normal, retail venues here in Guangzhou there is a significant difference between the computers that are sold in China compared to an equivalent machine from North America.
1) For the same performance and features, same manufacturer (both made in China) and perhaps same model, the machine sold in the USA will cost 10-20% less.
2) As above, and the quality of the USA sold machine will be, IMO, 20% higher.
3) For Microsoft Windows, the USA sold machine will come with either Windows 7 flavor or Windows 8, but in China it will not, unless you want to pay full retail price for Chinese Windows or English Windows if they actually have a legit copy, which I don't think is normally available in China.
Perhaps others (Calach?) can comment on mail order machines here. FYI, there are geographic designations for electronic availability, and from my experience that includes quality. China is at the bottom of the list with other developing nations.
The more expensive laptops, such as touch screens, will either come with Chinese Windows 8 and the normal models or some variant of Linux. When I went shopping recently, the sales people were all very up front with the operating system choices: real Chinese Windows or pirate Chinese Windows converted to English Windows installed for you for free. Or Linux that came installed.
I did not check this info. exhaustively and did not check for Sony Vaio, but for the Acers, HP's, Compaqs, and Toshibas, this is what it looked like to me.
I bought an Acer for 2400 RMB ($400 USD), it came installed with some Linux, they put a pirate Windows 7 that appears to have started as Chinese and was converted to English as the login screen is Chinese and a few other things. It was the least expensive, smallest machine I could find that I just wanted for school to run PPT's, play basic movies at projector resolution (800 x 600), etc.
It is so slow! Is this because of pirate Windows? I have not connected it to the internet a single time so if it's infected, it came that way. When working on a PPT and I save, it takes about 30 seconds. I can swap out the hard drive with others I have to see if that affects the speed, but honestly I just want it for the classroom and be easy to carry back and forth to home - low weight, and I don't want to tinker around with it. It has 4 GB RAM, 1.5 GHz Intel CPU, 350 GB hard drive.