You can remove the keyboard from the top case, however it's a bit of a destructive process. I replaced my keyboard by just buying a replacement on ebay for ux31. After you remove everything, screen, motherboard etc. remove the plastic films and just pop-off all the little black plastic pieces (there about 30 of them around the perimeter and middle of the keyboard). What I did was to use tweezers to remove just the tops of the plastic pieces, so when I put back the new keyboard, the plastic guides were still there. After you put the new keyboard, I just taped and hot glued it to the case. Seems to work fine and the flex is minimal. However, the only problem is the replacement UX31 keyboard had very shallow key travel, so you need to get used to typing with it.