Why do they make sound recorders on computers last only 60 seconds before you have to hit the record button again?
I’ve never seen one that works like that.
That’s only the Windows sound recorder program, and frankly it’s nothing more than cheapness on Microsoft’s behalf. Plenty of freeware, including Audacity, will allow you to record to the limit of your hard drive’s capacity.
I don’t think that thing’s changed much since windows 3.1
My guess is that it’s a fail safe. Try to recored your own voice in a wave file (.wav)
The file is HUGE. You could easily use up a gig and not even be aware. Of course you can now compress that gig in to an m4a file or a mp3 file at 32k or 16k and it’s quite small, but I could see people saying “What happened to my hard drive???” 
There’s also the marvelous HarddiskOgg, which records directly to disk without creating giant-size temp files. It’s also configurable as hell, which is nice for unattended audio recording.
Audacity is a good program. On my old computer (bought circa July 2004), if I forgot I had Audacity open, when I tried to open it a message came up saying that it would make my system unstable. Although puters have certainly improved in the intervening time, Audacity must be a memory hog or something. Microsoft probably wasn’t willing to sweat the details (or give it away).