specs are as follows, any advice would be appreciated:
ram=6gig
64bit operating system
processor=intel core i3 cpu m370 @ 2.4GHz 2.39GHz
video card= ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5730

It is a laptop that is about 1 year old......

Thanks

As others said in another topic, your system is, I guess single core CPU... and thus doesn't meet the minimum requirements to run Skyrim.

Refer to topic:

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1376691-8-10-fps-intel-forever-fail/

for outside, try turning off grass shadows (with 1.6 it's added in your SkyrimPrefs under [General] as bShadowsonGrass=1<--change this value to 0) and try lowering down your grass view distance to around 3 or 4 (if you haven't already).

for inside, try out one of the various fog/shadow remover mods on the Skyrim Nexus, as that has been said at times to improve performance. you could also try OC'ing your GPU (make sure to know what you're doing), as that might boost you up a good 5-7 frames. if none of that works, then try turning down your AA (no higher than 4x). you can keep your Antistrophic Filtering at whatever value it's already at as it usually gives little to no performance hit on most rigs.

beyond that, can you specify what your average FPS usually is (for indoors and outdoors)?

Skyrim is a very CPU intensive game. If you only have a single core @2.4ghz then it may struggle.