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Yes, a tripod is CRITICAL for taking watch photos (or any real close-up work actually).
I use a room in my house that has 2 full walls of glass with a western and southern exposure. The best light for me is from sun-up until about 2PM. You always want to use INDIRECT, or difused sunlight if you can ... like outside, but in the shade on a really sunny day.
In my 'room' there is no fixture on the cieling. When I shoot, I always make sure my watch crystal is pointing straight up. This means the only reflection I have to deal with is an undetectable white ceiling. Looking at your watch crystal from your cams point of view is very important ... and adjusting your CPL at that point to minimize the reflections. Remember, what you see reflected in the crystal, is what will apear in your photo. Minor flaws can be fixed ... major ones just waste a lot of time in editing and are sometimes better tossed in lieu of just taking a better shot to start with.
I also use another trick for taking shots when the watch really needs to be tilted. I use a piece of white poster board and hold it so that the entire crystal (or whatever reflective surface) is blocked from reflecting anything but that board. Black sometimes works best for taking pix of chromed (ie, polished) surfaces to give a richer appearance.
Here are the same shots, one with a 'white' reflection, and one with a 'black' reflection.
White:
Black:
... think of photography as 'painting with light' and it does become quite a bit easier :) .
Lastly, I use a pretty simple little photo editing program ... it has to be complex enough to do the job, but I don't like being baffled looking for certain functions either. What I use is 'JASC Paint Shop Pro Studio' . It can be found at http://www.jasc.com ... their latest product is Paint Shop Pro Photo X2, so old copies of the Studio software I use can be had for cheap (about 25 bucks).
As I stated in my other thread, this is where the magic happens. Investing the time to learn a piece of software will pay BIG dividends in your photos. If you like messing around on the computer and photography in general, the learning experience can be pleasant :) . If you can learn to play with brightness and contrast, as well as removing all the little specs of crap that will inevitably end up in EVERY pic you take, you will be well on your way.
Here is a shot I just took, just as described above, of my new green Orsa ... still waiting for the special strap I ordered to arrive:
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