thinking about getting sonos one- confused about Alexa capabilities.

A simpler alternative may be to wire a better speaker to the Dot, leaving no change in the user interface; if you do that, be sure to get one that has a way to disable any autosleep feature and can be left connected to the mains. Or even get an Echo. Alexa on Sonos is still in beta stage, and will take some time to stabilise.

I thought about that option, using a sonos play:1 instead. the problem with that is the sonos play:1 goes into sleep mode and I have heard that there is a delay for it to wake up.

I am still interested in hearing feedback from someone who actually owns a sonos one with alexa as to whether or not you can ask it non-music related questions and get a response?

Kumar's suggestion is a good one depending on your interests. There are some very good bookshelf speakers out there that will more do the job. But if you're still serious about the Sonos, I can try to answer your question more specifically.

If I get the sonos one to replace the echo dot, can I still say "alexa, wake me up at 7am tomorrow", or "alexa, sing for me", or "alexa, read me a bedtime story", or "alexa, what's the new for today", etc, etc?

Alarms will work, although Amazon's new music alarms ("Alexa, wake me up to Beyonce") are not currently supported.
Sleep Timers do not yet work.
Reminders ("Remind me at 10am to change the laundry") do not yet work.
The Flash Briefing ("What's the news?) does work, although certain skills (like BBC) may not.
The Amazon Storytime skill does not yet work.
Sports Update ("Alexa, sports update) does not yet work.
Audible doesn't work.

Edit: To answer your second post, non-music related questions are supported.

Also, if you have other echo devices in the house, you will lose drop-in calling, a feature which may never be available on the Sonos.

Hope this helps.

ok thanks for the info. Sounds like the sonos one isn't for me at this point. I might be better off getting the new echo to replace the dot. It will have better sound, will be more user friendly for my 10 year old, and will still function like her dot does.

At $149.99 the Echo Show would be a big improvement in sound for your 10 year old and still retain full Echo functionality plus cool video features. In the future when the Sonos Skill comes out of beta it will also be a good way to control a Sonos system so you won't lose the value of your investment if you get into Sonos at a future point in time.

I did not suggest the Show because I have not see it. But the video aspect that is added looks very useful, for sure.

To also clarify; all Sonos speakers go into sleep mode, but there is almost no noticeable delay in their starting music play from sleep, automatically. As long as they are left powered on.